VDRI 

RIV1A 


LDGAN!EAFSALL  SMITH 


MORE 

TRIVIA 


By 
LOGAN  PEARSALL  SMITH 


AUTHOR  OF    "TRIVIA" 


NEW  YORK 

HARCOURT,  BRACE  AND  COMPANY 
1921 


COPYRIGHT,    1921,    BY 
HARCOURT,   BRACE   AND    COMPANY,   INC. 


PRINTED    IN   THE    U.  8.  A    BY 

THE    QU1NN    at    BODEN    COMPANY 

RAHWAY     N.    J. 


CONTENTS 

A  GREETING      tX 

REASSURANCE      3 

THE  GREAT  ADVENTURE      4 

THE  BEATIFIC  VISION      5 

FACES      6 

THE  OBSERVER      7 

CHAOS      8 

THE  GHOST      P 

THE  HOUR-GLASS      lo 

THE  LATCHKEY      11 

GOOD  PRACTICE      12 

EVASION      13 

DINING  OUT    14 
WHAT'S  WRONG    15 
AT  SOLEMN  MUSIC     17 

THE   GOAT      18 

SELF-CONTROL      19 

THE  COMMUNION  OF  SOULS      20 

WAXWORKS      21 

ADJECTIVES      22 

WHERE?      23 

IN  THE  STREET      2^ 

THE  ABBEY  AT  NIGHT      25 

DESPERANCE      26 

CHAIRS      27 

A  GRIEVANCE      28 

THE  MOON      29 

iii 


2030353 


CONTENTS 

LONGEVITY      30 

IN    THE  BUS      31 

JUSTIFICATION      32 

THE  SAYING  OF  A  PERSIAN  POET      33 

MONOTONY      34 

DAYDREAM      35 

PROVIDENCE      36 

ACTION      37 

WAITING      38 

THE   WRONG  WORD      4o 

IONS      4! 

A  FIGURE  OF   SPEECH      42 

A  SLANDER      $3 

SYNTHESIS      44 

THE   AGE      45 

COMFORT      46 

APPEARANCE   AND   REALITY      47 

LONELINESS      48 

THE   WELSH   HARP      49 

MISAPPREHENSION      51 

THE  LIFT      52 

SLOANE  STREET    53 
REGENT'S  PARK    54 
THE  AVIARY    55 
ST.  JOHN'S  WOOD    56 
THE  GARDEN  SUBURB    57 
SUNDAY  CALLS    59 
AN  ANOMALY    60 

iv 


CONTENTS 

THE  LISTENER      61 

ABOVE   THE  CLOUDS      62 

THE   BUBBLE      63 

CAUTION      64 

DESIRES      65 

MOMENTS      66 

THE   EPITAPH      67 

INTERRUPTION      68 

THE   EAR-TRUMPET       ?O 

GUILT      71 

CADOGAN   GARDENS       72 

THE   RESCUE      73 

CHARM      74 

CARAVANS       75 

THE   SUBURBS      76 

THE    CONCERTO      77 

SOMEWHERE      78 

THE   PLATITUDE      79 

THE   FETISH      80 

THE   ECHO      81 

THE   SCAVENGER      82 

THE   HOT-BED      83 

APHASIA      84 

MAGIC      85 

MRS.  BACKE      86 

WHISKERS      87 

THE   SPELLING  LESSON      88 

JEUNESSE      89 

V 


CONTENTS 

HANGING  ON      90 

SUPERANNUATION      91 

AT  THE   CLUB      92 

DELAY      93 

SMILES      94 

THE  DAWN      95 

THE  PEAR      96 

INSOMNIA      97 

READING  PHILOSOPHY      98 

MORAL  TRIUMPH      99 

A  VOW      100 

THE  SPRINGS  OF  ACTION      lol 

IN  THE   CAGE      Io2 

SHRINKAGE      Io3 

VOICES      104 

EVANESCENCE      Io5 

COMPLACENCY      Io6 

MY  PORTRAIT      Io7 

THE  RATIONALIST      Io8 

THOUGHTS      109 

PHRASES      11 0 

DISENCHANTMENT      111 

ASK  ME  NO  MORE      112 

FAME      113 

NEWS   ITEMS      114 

JOY      115 

IN   ARCADY      116 

WORRIES      117 

vi 


CONTENTS 

THINGS   TO  WRITE      118 

PROPERTY      119 

IN  A  FIX      120 

VERTIGO      122 

THE  EVIL  EYE      123 

THE   EPITHET      124 

THE   GARDEN  PARTY      125 

WELTSCHMERZ      126 

BOGEYS      127 

LIFE-ENHANCEMENT      129 

ECLIPSE      130 

THE   PYRAMID      131 

THE   FULL   MOON      132 

LUTON      133 

THE  DANGER  OF  GOING  TO  CHURCH      134 

THE   SONNET      136 

WELTANSCHAUUNG      137 

THE   ALIEN      138 

HYPOTHESES      139 

THE  ARGUMENT      14O 


Vii 


A  GREETING 

'  T  T  T  HAT  funny  clothes  you  wear,  dear 
W     Readers!      And    your    hats!      The 
thought  of  your  hats  does  make  me  laugh. 
And  I  think  your  sex-theories  quite  horrid.' 

Thus  across  the  void  of  Time  I  send,  with 
a  wave  of  my  hand,  a  greeting  to  that  quaint, 
remote,  outlandish,  unborn  people  whom  we 
call  Posterity,  and  whom  I,  like  other  very 
great  writers,  claim  as  my  readers — urging 
them  to  hurry  up  and  get  born,  that  they  may 
have  the  pleasure  of  reading  *  More  Trivia.' 


MORE 
TRIVIA 


REASSURANCE 

I  LOOK  at  my  overcoat  and  my  hat  hanging 
in  the  hall  with  reassurance;  for  although 
I  go  out  of  doors  with  one  individuality  to-day, 
when  yesterday  I  had  quite  another,  yet  my 
clothes  keep  my  various  selves  buttoned  up  to- 
gether, and  enable  all  these  otherwise  irrecon- 
cilable aggregates  of  psychological  phenomena 
to  pass  themselves  off  as  one  person. 


THE  GREAT  ADVENTURE 

BEFORE  opening  the  front-door  I  paused, 
for  a  moment  of  profound  consideration. 

Dim-lit,  shadowy,  full  of  menace  and  -un- 
imaginable chances,  stretched  all  around  my 
door  the  many-peopled  streets.  I  could  hear 
ominous  and  muffled,  the  tides  of  multitudinou. 
traffic,  sounding  along  their  ways.  Was  I 
equipped  for  the  navigation  of  those  water*? 
armed  and  ready  to  adventure  out  into  that 
dangerous  world  again? 

Gloves?  Money?  Cigarettes?  Matches? 
Yes;  and  I  had  an  umbrella  for  its  tempest*,, 
and  a  latchkey  for  my  safe  return. 


THE  BEATIFIC  VISION 

SHOVING  and  pushing,  and  shoved  and 
pushed,  a  dishonoured  bag  of  bones  about 
•London,  or  carted  like  a  herring  in  a  box 
through  tunnels  in  the  clay  beneath  it,  as  I 
(bump  my  head  in  a  bus,  or  hang,  half-suffo- 
%ated,  from  a  greasy  strap  in  the  Underground, 
I  dream,  like  other  Idealists  and  Saints  and 
« Social  Thinkers,  of  a  better  world  than  this, 
a  world  that  might  be,  a  City  of  Heaven 
brought  down  at  last  to  earth. 

One  footman  flings  open  the  portals  of  my 

palace  in  that  New  Jerusalem  for  me;  another 

unrolls  a  path  of  velvet  to  the  enormous  motor 

Mch  floats  me,  swift  and  silent,  through  the 
•  \  traffic — I  leaning  back  like  God  on  hal- 
Jowed  cushions,  smoking  a  big  cigar. 


FACES 

ALMOST  always  the  streets  are  full  of 
dreary-looking    people;     sometimes    for 
weeks  on  end  the  poor  face-hunter  returns  un- 
blest  from  his  expeditions,  with  no  provision 
with  which  to  replenish  his  daydream-larder. 

Then  one  day  the  plenty  is  all  too  great; 
there  are  Princesses  at  the  street-crossings, 
Queens  in  the  taxi-cabs,  Beings  fair  as  the  day- 
spring  on  the  tops  of  busses;  and  the  Gods 
themselves  can  be  seen  promenading  up  and 
down  Piccadilly. 


THE  OBSERVER 

TALK  of  ants!  It's  the  precise  habits,  the 
incredible  proceedings  of  human  insects  I 
like  to  note  and  study. 

Walking  to-day,  like  a  stranger  dropped  upon 
this  planet,  towards  Victoria,  I  chanced  to  see  a 
female  of  this  species,  a  certain  Mrs.  Jones  of 
my  acquaintance,  approaching  from  the  oppo- 
site direction.  Immediately  I  found  myself 
performing  the  oddest  set  of  movements  and 
manoeuvres.  I  straightened  my  back  and  sim- 
pered, I  lifted  my  hat  in  the  air;  and  then,  seiz- 
ing the  paw  of  this  female,  I  moved  it  up  and 
down  several  times,  giving  utterance  to  a  set 
formula  of  articulated  sounds. 

These  anthropological  gestures  and  vocalisa- 
tions, and  my  automatic  performance  of  them, 
reminded  me  that  it  was  after  all  from  inside 
one  of  them,  that  I  was  observing  these  Bipeds. 


CHAOS 

PUNCTUAL,  commonplace,  keeping  all 
appointments,  as  I  go  my  round  in  the 
obvious  world,  a  bit  of  Chaos  and  old  Night 
seems  to  linger  on  inside  me;  a  dark  bewilder- 
ment of  mind,  a  nebulous  sea  of  speculation,  a 
looming  of  shadowy  universes  out  of  nothing, 
and  their  collapse,  as  in  a  dream. 


THE  GHOST 

WHEN  people  talk  of  Ghosts  and  Haunt- 
ings,  I  never  mention  the  Apparition 
by  which  I  am  pestered,  the  Phantom  that 
shadows  me  about  the  streets,  the  image  or 
spectre,  so  familiar,  so  like  myself,  and  yet  so 
abhorrent,  which  lurks  in  the  plate-glass  of 
shop-windows,  or  leaps  out  of  mirrors  to  way- 
lay me. 


THE  HOUR-GLASS 

AT  the  corner  of  Oakley  Street  I  stopped 
for  a  moment's  chat  with  my  neighbour, 
Mrs.  Wheble,  who  was  waiting  there  for  a  bus. 

'  Do  tell  me/  she  asked, '  what  you  have  got 
in  that  odd-looking  parcel?  ' 

*  It's  an  hour-glass,'  I  said,  taking  it  out  of 
its  paper  wrapping.  *  I  saw  it  in  a  shop  in  the 
King's  Road.  I've  always  wanted  an  hour-glass 
to  measure  time  by.  What  a  mystery  Time 
really  is,  when  you  think  of  it!  See,  the  sands 
are  running  now  while  we  are  talking.  I've  got 
here  in  my  hand  the  most  potent,  the  most 
enigmatic,  the  most  fleeting  of  all  essences — 
Time,  the  sad  cure  for  all  our  sorrows — but  I 
say!  There's  your  bus  just  starting.  You'll 
miss  it  if  you  don't  look  out!  ' 


10 


THE  LATCHKEY 

I  WAS  astonished,  I  was  almost  horror- 
struck  by  the  sight  of  the  New  Moon  at  the 
end  of  the  street.  In  bewilderment  and  Blake- 
like  wonder  I  stood  and  gazed  at  it  on  my  door- 
step. For  what  was  I  doing  there;  I,  a 
wanderer,  a  pilgrim,  a  nomad  of  the  desert, 
with  no  home  save  where  the  evening  found  me 
— what  was  my  business  on  that  doorstep;  at 
what  commonplace  had  the  Moon  caught  me 
with  a  latchkey  in  my  hand? 


ii 


GOOD  PRACTICE 

WE  met  in  an  omnibus  last  evening.  '  And 
where  are  you  going  now?  '  she  asked, 
as  she  looked  at  me  with  amusement. 

*  I  am  going,  if  the  awful  truth  must  be  told, 
to  dine  in  Grosvenor  Square.' 

1  Lord!  '  she  colloquially  replied, '  and  what 
do  you  do  that  for?  ' 

'  I  do  it  because  I  am  invited.  And  besides,' 
I  went  on,  '  let  me  remind  you  of  what  the 
Persian  Mystics  say  of  the  Saints — that  the 
Saints  are  sometimes  rich,  that  God  sometimes 
endows  them  with  an  outward  show  of  wealth 
to  hide  them  from  the  profane.' 

*  Oh,  does  He?  Hides  them  in  Grosvenor 
Square?  ' 

'  Very  well,  then,  I  shall  tell  you  the  real 
truth;  I  shall  tell  you  my  real  reason  for  going 
to  dine  there.  Do  you  remember  what  Diogenes 
answered  when  they  asked  him  why  he  had 
asked  for  a  statue  at  the  public  expense?  ' 

'No;  what  did  he  say?  ' 

*  He  said — but  I  must  explain  another  time. 
I  have  to  get  off  here.    Good-night.' 

I  paused,  however,  at  the  door  of  the  bus. 
'  He  said,'  I  called  back,  '  "  I  am  practising 
Disappointment."     That — you  know  whom  I 
mean? — was  his  answer.' 
12 


EVASION 

'TTTHAT  do  you  think  of  the  Interna- 
y  V     tional  Situation?  '  asked  that  foreign 
Countess,  with  her  foreign,  fascinating  smile. 
Was  she  a  Spy?     I  felt  I  must  be  careful. 
'  What  do  I  think?  '  I  evasively  echoed;  and 
then,  carried  away  by  the  profound  and  melan- 
choly interest  of  this  question,   '  Think?  '  I 
queried,   '  do   I  ever  really  think?    Is   there 
anything  inside  my  head  but  cotton-wool?  How 
can  I  call  myself  a  Thinker?     What  am  I 
anyhow? '    I    pursued    the   sad    inquiry:    i  A 
noodle,    a    pigwidgeon,    a    ninnyhammer,    a 
bubble   on   the   wave,   a   leaf   in   the  wind, 
Madame!  ' 


DINING  OUT 

WHEN  I  think  of  Etiquette  and  Funerals; 
when  I  consider  the  euphemisms  and 
rites  and  conventions  and  various  costumes  with 
which  we  invest  the  acts  of  our  animal 
existence;  when  I  bear  in  mind  how  elegantly 
we  eat  our  victuals,  and  remember  the  series  of 
ablutions  and  preparations  and  salutations  and 
exclamations  and  manipulations  I  went  through 
when  I  dined  out  last  evening,  I  reflect  what 
creatures  we  are  of  ceremony;  how  elaborate, 
how  pompous  and  polite  a  simian  Species. 


WHAT'S  WRONG 

FROM  the  corner  of  the  dim,  half-empty 
drawing-room  where  they  sat,  they  could 
see,  in  a  great  mirror,  the  other  dinner-guests 
linger  and  depart.  But  none  of  them  were 
going  on — what  was  the  good? — to  that  evening 
party.  They  talked  of  satiety  and  disenchant- 
ment, of  the  wintry  weather,  of  illness  and  old 
age  and  death. 

'  But  what  really  frightens  me  most  in  life,' 
said  one  of  them,  '  what  gives  me  a  kind  of 
vertigo  or  shiver,  is — it  sounds  absurd,  but  it's 
simply  the  horror  of  Space,  I'epouvante  side- 
rale, — the  dismay  of  Infinity,  the  black  abysses 
in  the  Milky  Way,  the  silence  of  those  eternal 
spaces  beyond  the  furthest  stars.' 

'  But  Time,'  said  another  of  the  group, 
1  surely  Time  is  a  worse  nightmare.  Think  of 
it!  the  Past  with  never  a  beginning,  the 
Future  going  on  for  ever  and  ever,  and  the 
little  present  in  which  we  live  for  a  second, 
twinkling  between  these  two  black  abysses.' 

'  What's  wrong  with  me,'  mused  the  third 
speaker, '  is  that  even  the  Present  eludes  me.  I 
don't  know  what  it  really  is;  I  can  never  catch 
the  moment  as  it  passes;  I  am  always  far  ahead 
or  far  away  behind,  and  always  somewhere 
else.  I  am  not  really  here  now  with  you, 
IS 


WHAT'S  WRONG 

though  I  am  talking  to  you.  And  why  should 
I  go  to  the  party?  I  shouldn't  be  there,  either, 
if  I  went.  My  life  is  all  reminiscence  and 
anticipation — if  you  can  call  it  life,  if  I  am  not 
rather  a  kind  of  ghost,  haunting  a  past  that  has 
ceased  to  be,  or  a  future  that  is  still  more 
shadowy  and  unreal.  It's  ghastly  in  a  way,  this 
exile  and  isolation.  But  why  speak  of  it,  after 
all?' 

They  rose,  and  their  images  too  were 
reflected  in  the  great  mirror,  as  they  passed  out 
of  the  drawing-room,  and  dispersed,  each  on  his 
or  her  way,  into  the  winter  night. 


1 6 


AT  SOLEMN  MUSIC 

I    SAT  there,  hating  the  exuberance  of  her 
bust,  and  her  high-coloured  wig.    And  how 
could  I  listen  to  music  in  the  close  proximity 
of  those  loud  stockings  ? 

Then  our  eyes  met:  in  both  of  us  the 
enchanted  chord  was  touched;  we  both  looked 
through  the  same  window  into  Heaven.  In 
that  moment  of  musical,  shared  delight,  my 
soul  and  the  soul  of  that  large  lady,  joined 
hands  and  sang  like  the  morning  stars  together. 


THE  GOAT 

IN  the  midst  of  my  anecdote  a  sudden 
misgiving  chilled  me — had  I  told  them 
about  this  Goat  before?  And  then  as  I  talked 
there  gaped  upon  me — abyss  opening  beneath 
abyss — a  darker  speculation:  when  goats  are 
mentioned,  do  I  automatically  and  always  tell 
this  story  about  the  Goat  at  Portsmouth  ? 


18 


SELF-CONTROL 

STILL  I  am  not  a  pessimist,  nor  misan- 
thrope, nor  grumbler;  I  bear  it  all,  the 
burden  of  Public  Affairs,  the  immensity  of 
Space,  the  brevity  of  Life,  and  the  thought  of 
the  all-swallowing  Grave — all  this  I  put  up  with 
without  impatience.  I  accept  the  common  lot. 
And  if  now  and  then  for  a  moment  it  seems  too 
much;  if  I  get  my  feet  wet,  or  have  to  wait  too 
long  for  tea,  and  my  soul  in  these  wanes  of  the 
moon  cries  out  in  French  C'est  finif  I  always 
answer  Pazienzat  in  Italian — abbia  la  santa 
Pazienza! 


THE  COMMUNION  OF  SOULS 

O  of  course  I  bought  it !  How  could  I  help 
buying  it?  '  Then,  lifting  the  conversa- 
tion, as  with  Lady  Hyslop  one  always  lifts  it,  to 
a  higher  level, '  this  notion  of  Free  Will,'  I  went 
on,  '  the  notion,  for  instance,  that  I  was  free  to 
buy  or  not  to  buy  that  rare  edition,  seems,  when 
you  think  of  it — at  least  to  me  it  seems — a 
wretched  notion  really.  I  like  to  feel  that  I 
must  follow  the  things  I  desire  as — how  shall 
I  put  it? — as  the  tide  follows  the  Moon;  that 
my  actions  are  due  to  necessary  causes;  that 
the  world  inside  me  isn't  a  meaningless  chaos, 
but  a  world  of  order,  like  the  world  outside, 
governed  by  beautiful  laws,  as  the  Stars  are 
governed.' 

'  Ah,  how  I  love  the  Stars!  '  murmured  Lady 
Hyslop.  *  What  things  they  say  to  me!  They 
are  the  pledges  of  lost  recognitions;  the  prom- 
ise of  ineffable  mitigations.' 

'  Mitigations?  '  I  gasped,  feeling  for  a  mo- 
ment a  little  giddy.  But  it  didn't  matter: 
always  when  we  meet  Lady  Hyslop  and  I  have 
the  most  wonderful  conversations. 


20 


WAXWORKS 

UT  one  really  never  knows  the  Age  one 
lives  in.  How  interesting  it  would  be,'  I 
said  to  the  lady  next  me,  *  how  I  wish  we  could 
see  ourselves  as  Posterity  will  see  us!  ' 

I  have  said  it  before,  but  on  this  occasion  I 
was  struck — almost  thunder-struck — by  my 
own  remark.  Like  a  rash  enchanter,  the  spirit 
I  had  raised  myself  alarmed  me.  For  a  queer 
second  I  did  see  ourselves  in  that  inevitable 
mirror,  but  cadaverous  and  out-of-date  and 
palsied — a  dusty  set  of  old  waxworks, 
simpering  inanely  in  the  lumber-room  of  Time. 

'Better  to  be  forgotten  at  once!'  I  ex- 
claimed, with  an  emphasis  that  seemed  to  sur- 
prise the  lady  next  me. 


21 


ADJECTIVES 

BUT  why  wasn't  I  born,  alas,  in  an  age  of 
Adjectives;  why  can  one  no  longer  write 
of    silver-shedding    Tears    and    moon-tailed 
Peacocks,  of  eloquent  Death,  and  the  negro  and 
star-enamelled  Night? 


22 


WHERE? 

I  WHO  move  and  breathe  and  place  one 
5  foot  before  the  other,  who  watch  the  Moon 
wax  and  wane,  and  put  off  answering  my 
letters,  where  shall  I  find  the  Bliss  which 
dreams  and  blackbirds'  voices  promise,  of 
which  the  waves  whisper,  and  hand-organs  in 
streets  near  Paddington  faintly  sing? 

Does  it  dwell  in  some  island  of  the  South 
Seas,  or  far  oasis  among  deserts  and  gaunt 
mountains;  or  only  in  those  immortal  gardens 
imagined  by  Chinese  poets  beyond  the  great 
cold  palaces  of  the  Moon? 


IN  THE  STREET 

eye-encounters  in  the  street,  little 
touches  of  love-liking;  faces  that  ask,  as 
they  pass,  '  Are  you  my  new  lover?  '  Shall  I 
one  day — in  Park  Lane  or  Oxford  Street 
perhaps — see  the  unknown  Face  I  dread  and 
look  for? 


24 


THE  ABBEY  AT  NIGHT 

AND  as  at  night  I  went  past  the  Abbey,  saw 
its  walls  towering  high  and  solemn  among 
the  autumn  stars,  I  pictured  to  myself  the 
white  population  in  the  vast  darkness  of  its 
interior — all  that  hushed  people  of  Heroes — ; 
not  dead,  I  would  think  them,  but  animated 
with  a  still  kind  of  life;  and  at  last,  after  all 
th«iir  intolerable  toils,  the  sounding  tumult  of 
battle,  and  perilous  seapaths,  resting  there, 
tranquil  and  satisfied  and  glorious,  amid  the 
epitaphs  and  allegorical  figures  of  their  tombs 
— those  high-piled,  trophied,  shapeless  Abbey 
tombs,  that  long  ago  they  toiled  for,  and  laid 
down  their  gallant  lives  to  win. 


DESPERANCE 

'XT'ES,  as  you  say,  life  is  so  full  of  disap- 
j[  pointment,  disillusion!  More  and  more 
I  ask  myself,  as  I  grow  older,  what  is  the  good 
of  it  all?  We  dress,  we  go  out  to  dinner/  I  went 
on,  '  but  surely  we  walk  in  a  vain  show.  How 
good  this  asparagus  is!  I  often  say  asparagus 
is  the  most  delicious  of  all  vegetables.  And 
yet,  I  don't  know — when  one  thinks  of  fresh 
green  peas.  One  can  get  tired  of  asparagus,  as 
one  can  of  strawberries — but  tender  peas  I 
could  eat  forever.  Then  peaches,  and  melons; 
— and  there  are  certain  pears,  too,  that  taste 
like  heaven.  One  of  my  favourite  daydreams 
for  the  long  afternoon  of  life  is  to  live  alone,  a 
formal,  greedy,  selfish  old  gentleman,  in  a 
square  house,  say  in  Devonshire,  with  a  square 
garden,  whose  walls  are  covered  with  apricots 
and  figs  and  peaches:  and  there  are  precious 
pears,  too,  of  my  own  planting,  on  espaliers 
along  the  paths.  I  shall  walk  out  with  a  gold- 
headed  cane  in  the  autumn  sunshine,  and  just 
at  the  right  moment  I  shall  pick  another  pear. 
However,  that  isn't  at  all  what  I  was  going  to 
say — ' 


CHAIRS 

IN  the  streets  of  London  there  are  door-bells 
I  ring  (I  see  myself  ringing  them);  in 
certain  houses  there  are  chairs  covered  with 
chintz  or  cretonne  in  which  I  sit  and  talk  about 
life,  explaining  often  after  tea  what  I  think  of 
it. 


A  GRIEVANCE 

THEY  are  all  persons  of  elegant  manners 
and  spotless  reputations;  they  seem  to 
welcome  my  visits,  and  they  listen  to  my 
anecdotes  with  unflinching  attention.  I  have 
only  one  grievance  against  them;  they  will  keep 
in  their  houses  mawkish  books  full  of  stale 
epithets,  which,  when  I  only  seem  to  smell  their 
proximity,  produce  in  me  a  slight  feeling  of 
nausea. 

There  are  people,  I  believe,  who  are  affected 
in  this  way  by  the  presence  of  cats. 


28 


THE  MOON 

I  WENT  in  and  shook  hands  with  my  hostess, 
but  no  one  else  took  any  special  notice; 
no  one  screamed  or  left  the  room;  the  quiet 
murmur  of  talk  went  on.  I  suppose  I  seemed 
like  the  others;  observed  from  outside  no  doubt 
I  looked  more  or  less  like  them. 

But  inside,  seen  from  within  .  .  .  ?  Or  was 
it  a  conceivable  hypothesis  that  we  were  all 
alike  inside  also — that  all  those  quietly-talking 
people  had  got  the  Moon,  too,  in  their  heads? 


29 


LONGEVITY 

UT  when  you  are  as  old  as  I  am!  '  I  said 
to  the  young  lady  in  pink  satin.  '  But  I 
don't  know  how  old  you  are,'  that  young  lady 
answered  almost  archly.  We  were  getting  on 
quite  nicely. 

'Oh  I'm  endlessly  old;  my  memory  goes 
back  almost  forever.  I  come  out  of  the  Middle 
Ages.  I  am  the  primitive  savage  we  are  all 
descended  from;  I  believe  in  Devil-worship,  and 
the  power  of  the  Stars;  I  dance  under  the  new 
Moon,  naked  and  tattooed  and  holy.  I  am  a 
Cave-dweller,  a  contemporary  of  Mastodons 
and  Mammoths;  I  am  pleistocene  and  neolithic, 
and  full  of  the  lusts  and  terrors  of  the  great 
pre-glacial  forests.  But  that's  nothing;  I  am 
millions  of  years  older;  I  am  an  arboreal  Ape, 
an  aged  Baboon,  with  all  its  instincts;  I  am  a 
pre-simian  quadruped,  I  have  great  claws,  eyes 
that  see  in  the  dark,  and  a  long  prehensile  tail.' 

'Good  gracious!  '  said  the  terrified  young 
lady  in  pink  satin.  Then  she  turned,  and  for 
the  rest  of  the  dinner  talked  in  a  hushed  voice 
with  her  other  neighbour. 


IN  THE  BUS 

AS  I  sat  inside  that  crowded  bus,  so  sad,  so 
incredible  and  sordid  seemed  the  fat  face 
of  the  woman  opposite  me,  that  I  interposed 
the  thought  of  Kilimanjaro,  that  highest  moun- 
tain of  Africa,  between  us;  the  grassy  slopes 
and  green  realms  of  negro  kings  from  which 
its  dark  cone  rises,  the  immense,  dim,  elephant- 
haunted  forests  which  clothe  its  flanks;  and 
above,  the  white  crown  of  snow,  freezing  in 
eternal  isolation  over  the  palm  trees  and  des- 
erts of  the  African  Equator. 


JUSTIFICATION 

WELL,  what  if  I  did  put  it  on  a  little  at 
that  luncheon?  Do  I  not  owe  it  to 
my  friends  to  assert  now  and  then  my  claims 
to  consideration;  ought  I  always  to  allow  myself 
to  be  trampled  on  and  treated  as  dirt?  And 
how  about  the  Saints  and  Patriarchs  of  the 
Bible?  Didn't  Joseph  tell  of  the  dream  in  which 
his  wheatsheaf  was  exalted;  Deborah  sing 
without  blame  how  she  arose  a  mother  in  Israel, 
and  David  boast  of  his  triumph  over  the  paw 
of  the  lion  and  the  paw  of  the  bear?  Nay,  in 
His  confabulations  with  His  chosen  people,  does 
not  the  Creator  of  the  Universe  Himself  take 
every  opportunity  of  impressing  on  those 
Hebrews  His  importance,  His  power,  His 
glory  ? 
Was  I  not  made  in  His  image  ? 


THE  SAYING  OF  A  PERSIAN  POET 

ALL  this  hurry  to  dress  and  go  out,  these 
journeys  in  taxi-cabs,  or  in  trains  with 
my  packed  bag  from  big  railway  stations — 
what  keeps  me  going,  I  sometimes  ask  myself; 
and  I  remember  how,  in  his  *  Masnavi  I 
Ma'navi'  or  'Spiritual  Couplets,'  Jalalu  T>- 
Din  Muhammad  Rumi  says  that  our  Desires, 
the  swarm  of  gaudy  Thoughts  we  pursue  and 
follow,  are  short-lived  like  summer  insects,  and 
must  all  be  killed  before  long  by  the  winter  of 
age. 


33 


MONOTONY 

OH,  to  be  becalmed  on  a  sea  of  glass  all 
day;  to  listen  all  day  to  rain  on  the  roof, 
or  wind  in  pine  trees;  to  sit  all  day  by  a  water- 
fall reading  exquisite,  artificial,  monotonous 
Persian  poems  about  an  oasis-garden  where  it  is 
always  spring — where  roses  bloom  and  lovers 
sigh,  and  nightingales  lament  without  ceasing, 
and  white-robed  figures  sit  in  groups  by  the 
running  water  and  discuss  all  day,  and  day 
after  day,  the  Meaning  of  Life. 


34 


DAYDREAM 

IN  the  cold  and  malicious  society  in  which  I 
live,  I  must  never  mention  the  Soul,  nor 
speak  of  my  aspirations.  If  I  ever  once  let 
these  people  get  a  glimpse  of  the  higher  side  of 
my  nature,  they  would  set  on  me  like  a  pack  of 
wolves  and  tear  me  in  pieces. 

I  wish  I  had  soulful  friends — refined  Maiden 
Ladies  with  ideals  and  long  noses,  who  live  at 
Hampstead  or  Putney,  and  play  Chopin  with 
passion.  On  sad  autumn  afternoons  I  would  go 
and  have  tea  with  them,  and  talk  of  the  spiritual 
meaning  of  Beethoven's  late  Sonatas;  or  dis- 
cuss in  the  twilight  the  pathos  of  life  and  the 
Larger  Hope. 


35 


PROVIDENCE 

BUT  God  sees  me;  He  knows  my  beau- 
tiful nature,  and  how  pure  I  keep  amid 
all  sorts  of  quite  horrible  temptations.  And 
that  is  why,  as  I  feel  in  my  bones,  there  is  a 
special  Providence  watching  over  me;  an 
Angel  sent  expressly  from  heaven  to  guide  my 
footsteps  from  harm.  For  I  never  trip  up  or 
fall  downstairs  like  other  people;  I  am  not  run 
over  by  cabs  and  busses  at  street-crossings;  in 
the  worst  wind  my  hat  never  blows  off. 

And  if  ever  any  of  the  great  cosmic  processes 
or  powers  threaten  me,  I  believe  that  God  sees 
it:  '  Stop  it!  '  He  shouts  from  His  ineffable 
Throne,  '  Don't  you  touch  my  Chosen  One, 
my  Pet  Lamb,  my  Beloved.  Leave  him  alone, 
I  tell  you!  ' 


ACTION 

I  AM  no  mere  thinker,  no  mere  creature  of 
dreams  and  imagination.  I  stamp  and  post 
letters;  I  buy  new  bootlaces  and  put  them  in 
my  boots.  And  when  I  set  out  to  get  my  hair 
cut,  it  is  with  the  iron  face  of  those  men  of 
empire  and  unconquerable  will,  those  Caesars 
and  Napoleons,  whose  footsteps  shake  the 
earth. 


37 


WAITING 

WE  met  at  Waterloo;  as  we  were  paying 
the  same  visit,  we  travelled  in  the 
train  together;  but  when  we  got  out  at  that 
country  station,  she  found  that  her  boxes 
had  not  arrived.  They  might  have  gone  on  to  the 
next  station;  I  waited  with  her  while  enquiries 
were  telephoned  down  the  line.  It  was  a  mild 
spring  evening:  side  by  side  we  sat  in  silence 
on  a  wooden  bench  facing  the  platform;  the 
bustle  caused  by  the  passing  train  ebbed  away; 
the  dusk  deepened,  and  one  by  one  the  stars 
twinkled  out  in  the  serene  sky. 

'How  peaceful  it  is!  '  I  remarked  at  last. 
1  Is  there  not  a  certain  charm,'  I  went  on  after 
another  pause,  '  in  waiting  like  this  in  silence 
under  the  stars?  It's  after  all  a  little  adventure, 
is  it  not?  a  moment  with  a  certain  mood  and 
colour  and  atmosphere  of  its  own.' 

'  I  often  think/  I  once  more  mused  aloud, 
'  I  often  think  that  it  is  in  moments  like  this  of 
waiting  and  hushed  suspense,  that  one  tastes 
most  fully  the  savour  of  life,  the  uncertainty, 
and  yet  the  sweetness  of  our  frail  mortal  condi- 
tion, so  capable  of  fear  and  hope,  so  dependent 
on  a  million  accidents.' 

'Luggage!'  I  said,  after  another  silence, 
'is  it  not  after  all  absurd  that  minds  which 
38 


WAITING 

contemplate  the  universe  should  cart  about 
with  them  brushes  and  boots  and  drapery  in 
leather  boxes?  Suppose  all  this  paltry  junk,' 
I  said,  giving  my  suitcase,  which  stood  near  me, 
a  disdainful  poke  with  my  umbrella,  '  suppose 
it  all  disappears,  what  after  all  does  it  matter?  ' 
At  last  she  spoke.  '  But  it's  not  your 
luggage,'  she  said,  '  but  mine  which  is  lost.' 


39 


THE  WRONG  WORD 

WE  were  talking  of  the  Universe  at  tea, 
and  one  of  our  company  declared  that 
he  at  least  was  entirely  without  illusions.  He 
had  long  since  faced  the  fact  that  Nature  had 
no  sympathy  with  our  hopes  and  fears,  and  was 
completely  indifferent  to  our  fate.  The 
Universe,  he  said,  was  a  great  meaningless 
machine;  Man,  with  his  reason  and  moral 
judgments,  was  the  product  of  blind  forces, 
which,  though  they  would  so  soon  destroy  him, 
he  must  yet  despise.  To  endure  this  tragedy  of 
our  fate  with  passionless  despair,  never  to 
wince  or  bow  the  head,  to  confront  the  hostile 
powers  with  high  disdain,  to  fix  with  eyes  of 
scorn  the  Gorgon  face  of  Destiny,  to  stand  on 
the  brink  of  the  abyss,  hurling  defiance  at  the 
icy  stars — this,  he  said,  was  his  attitude,  and 
it  produced,  as  you  can  imagine,  a  very 
powerful  impression  on  the  company.  As  for 
me,  I  was  completely  carried  away  by  my 
enthusiasm. 
'  By  Jove,  that  is  a  stunt!  '  I  cried. 


40 


IONS 

SELF-DETERMINATION,'  one  of  them 
insisted.    'Arbitration!  '  cried  another. 

*  Co-operation?  '     suggested  the  mildest  of 
the  party. 

'  Confiscation !  '  answered  an  uncompromis- 
ing female. 

I,  too,  became  slightly  intoxicated  by  the 
sound  of  these  vocables.  And  were  they  not  the 
cure  for  all  our  ills  ? 

*  Inoculation !  '   I     chimed   in.     '  Transub- 
stantiation,  Alliteration,  Inundation,  Flagella- 
tion and  Afforestation!  ' 


A  FIGURE  OF  SPEECH 

fTAHOUGH  I  sometimes  lay  down  the  law 
myself  on  public  questions,  I  don't  very 
much  care  to  hear  other  people  do  it.  The 
heavy  talker,  however,  who  was  now  holding 
forth  about  finance,  showed  such  a  grasp  of  his 
subject,  and  made  such  mincemeat  of  a  rash 
opponent,  that  I  thought  it  best,  for  the 
moment,  to  say  nothing. 

1  So  what  you  allege,'  he  triumphed  in  his 
overbearing  manner,  '  is  perfectly  irrelevant. 
My  withers  are  unwrung.  It  does  not  affect  my 
position  in  the  least.' 

And  then  I  lightly  flung  my  Goliath  pebble. 

*  Withers?  '  I  ingenuously  asked,  '  what  are 
the  withers,  anyhow?  ' 

He  turned  on  me  a  glance  of  anger  and 
contempt.  l  Withers — why  the  withers — ' 

*  It's  only — only  a  figure  of  speech,'  he  stam- 
mered. 

'Oh!  '  I  said,  with  a  look  at  the  company 
full  of  suggestion,  *  a  figure  of  speech — I  see.' 


42 


A  SLANDER 

'T)UT  I'm  told  you  don't  believe  in  love — ' 
IJ  '  Now  who  on  earth  could  have  told  you 
that? '  I  cried  indignantly.  '  Of  course  I 
believe  in  it — there  is  no  one  more  enthusiastic 
about  Love  than  I  am.  I  believe  in  it  at  all 
times  and  seasons,  but  especially  in  the  Spring. 
Why,  just  think  of  it!  True-love  amid  the 
apple-blossoms,  lovers  who  outwake  the  night- 
ingales of  April,  the  touch  of  hands  and  lips, 
and  the  clinging  of  flower-soft  limbs  together; 
and  all  this  amid  the  gay,  musical,  perfumed 
landscape  of  the  Spring.  Why,  nothing,  Miss 
Tomkins,  could  be  more  appropriate  and 
pretty!  ' 

1  Haven't  I  said  so  again  and  again,  haven't  I 
published  it  more  than  once  in  the  weekly 
papers?  ' 


43 


SYNTHESIS 

T'S   awful,'    I   said,   'I    think   it   simply 
wicked,  the  way  you  tear  your  friends  to 
pieces!  ' 

*  But  you  do  it  yourself,  you  know  you  do ! 
You  analyse  and  analyse  people,  and  then  you 
make  them  up  again  into  creatures  larger  than 
life—' 

*  That's    exactly   it,'    I    answered    gravely. 
*  If  I  take  people  to  pieces,  I  do  it  in  order  to 
put  them  together  again  better  than  they  were 
before;  I  make  them  more  real,  so  to  speak, 
more  significant,  more  essentially  themselves. 
But  to  cut  them  up,  as  you  do,  and  leave  the 
fragments  lying  around  anywhere  on  the  floor 
— I  can't  tell  you  how  cruel  and  heartless  and 
wrong  I  think  it!  ' 


44 


THE  AGE 

AGAIN,  as  the  train  drew  out  of  the  station, 
the  old  gentleman  pulled  out  of  his 
pocket  his  great  shining  watch;  and  for  the 
fifth,  or,  as  it  seemed  to  me,  the  five-hundredth 
time,  he  said  (we  were  in  the  carriage  alone 
together)  *  To  the  minute,  to  the  very  minute! 
It's  a  marvellous  thing,  the  Railway;  a  won- 
derful age!  ' 

Now  I  had  been  long  annoyed  by  the  old 
gentleman's  smiling  face,  platitudes,  and  piles 
of  newspapers;  I  had  no  love  for  the  Age,  and 
an  impulse  came  on  me  to  denounce  it. 

'Allow  me  to  tell  you,'  I  said,  'that  I 
consider  it  a  wretched,  an  ignoble  age.  Where's 
the  greatness  of  life?  Where's  dignity,  leisure, 
stateliness;  where's  Art  and  Eloquence?  Where 
are  your  great  scholars,  statesmen?  Let  me  ask 
you,  sir,'  I  cried  glaring  at  him,  *  where's 
your  Gibbon,  your  Burke  or  Chatham?  ' 


45 


COMFORT 

PEOPLE  often  said  that  there  was  nothing 
sadder,  she  mourned,  than  the  remem- 
brance of  past  happiness;  but  to  her  it  seemed 
that  not  the  way  we  remembered,  but  the  way 
we  forgot,  was  the  real  tragedy  of  life.  Every- 
thing faded  from  us;  our  joys  and  sorrows  van- 
ished alike  in  the  irrevocable  flux;  we  could 
not  stay  their  fleeting.  Did  I  not  feel,  she 
asked,  the  sadness  of  this  forgetting,  this  out- 
living all  the  things  we  care  for,  this  constant 
dying,  so  to  speak,  in  the  midst  of  life? 

I  felt  its  sadness  very  much;  I  felt  quite 
lugubrious  about  it.  'And  yet,'  I  said  (for 
I  did  really  want  to  think  of  something  that 
might  console  this  lamentable  lady),  'and  yet 
can  we  not  find,  in  this  fading  of  recollection, 
some  recompense,  after  all?  Think,  for  in- 
stance— '  But  what,  alas,  could  I  suggest? 

'  Think,'  I  began  once  more  after  a  moment 
of  reflection,  '  think  of  forgetting,  and  reading 
over  and  over  again,  all  Jane  Austen's  novels !  ' 


46 


APPEARANCE  AND  REALITY 

IT  is  pleasant  to  saunter  out  in  the  morning 
sun  and  idle  along  the  summer  streets  with 
no  purpose. 

But  is  it  Right? 

I  am  not  really  bothered  by  these  Questions 
— the  hoary  old  puzzles  of  Ethics  and 
Philosophy,  which  lurk  around  the  London 
corners  to  waylay  me.  I  have  got  used  to 
them;  and  the  most  formidable  of  all,  the 
biggest  bug  of  Metaphysics,  the  Problem  which 
nonplusses  the  wisest  heads  on  this  Planet,  has 
become  quite  a  familiar  companion  of  mine. 
What  is  Reality?  I  ask  myself  almost  daily: 
how  does  the  External  World  exist,  materialised 
in  mid-air,  apart  from  my  perceptions?  This 
show  of  streets  and  skies,  of  policemen  and 
perambulators  and  hard  pavements,  is  it  a  mere 
vision,  a  figment  of  the  Mind;  or  does  it  remain 
there,  permanent  and  imposing,  when  I  stop 
thinking  about  it? 

Often,  as  I  saunter  along  Piccadilly  or  Bond 
Street,  I  please  myself  with  the  Berkeleian 
notion  that  Matter  has  no  existence;  that  this 
so  solid-seeming  World  is  all  idea,  all  appear- 
ance— that  I  am  carried  soft  through  space 
inside  an  immense  Thought-bubble,  a  floating, 
diaphanous,  opal-tinted  Dream. 
47 


LONELINESS 

IS  there,  then,  no  friend?  No  one  who  hates 
Ibsen  nd  problem  plays,  and  the  Super- 
natural, and  Switzerland  and  Adultery  as  much 
as  I  do?  Must  I  live  all  my  life  as  mute  as  a 
mackerel,  companionless  and  uninvited,  and 
never  tell  anyone  what  I  think  of  my  famous 
contemporaries?  Must  I  plough  always  a 
solitary  furrow,  and  tread  the  winepress  alone? 


48 


THE  WELSH  HARP 

WHAT  charming  corners  one  can  find  in 
the  immense  dinginess  of  London,  and 
what  curious  encounters  become  a  part  of  the 
London-lover's  experience!  The  other  day, 
when  I  walked  a  long  way  out  of  the  Edgware 
Road,  and  stopped  for  tea  at  the  Welsh  Harp, 
on  the  banks  of  the  Brent  Reservoir,  I  found, 
beyond  the  modern  frontage  of  this  inn,  an  old 
garden  adorned  with  sham  ruins  and  statues, 
and  full  of  autumn  flowers  and  the  shimmer  of 
clear  water.  Sitting  there  and  drinking  my  tea 
— alone  as  I  thought  at  first,  in  the  twilight — 
I  became  aware  that  the  garden  had  another 
occupant;  that  at  another  table,  not  far  from 
me,  a  vague  and  not  very  prosperous-looking 
woman  in  a  shabby  bonnet  was  sitting,  with  her 
reticule  lying  by  her,  also  drinking  tea  and 
gazing  at  the  after-glow  of  the  sunset.  An 
elderly  spinster  I  thought  her,  a  dressmaker 
perhaps,  or  a  retired  governess,  one  of  those 
maiden  ladies  who  live  alone  in  quiet  lodgings, 
and  are  fond  of  romantic  fiction  and  solitary 
excursions. 

As  we  sat  there,  we  two  alone  in  the  growing 
dusk,  more  than  once  our  glances  met,  and 
a  curious  relation  of  sympathy  and  under- 
standing seemed  to  establish  itself  between  us; 
49 


THE  WELSH  HARP 

we  seemed  to  carry  on  a  dialogue  full  of  tacit 
avowals.  'Yes/  we  seemed  to  say,  as  our 
eyes  met  over  our  suspended  tea-cups,  *  yes, 
Beauty,  Romance,  the  Blue  Bird  that  sings  of 
Happiness — these  are  the  things  we  care  for — 
the  only  things  that,  in  spite  of  everything,  we 
still  care  for;  but  where  can  we  find  them  in  the 
dingy  London  streets  and  suburbs?  ' 

'And  yet,'  our  eyes  seemed  to  ask  each 
other,  '  isn't  this  garden,  in  its  shabby,  preten- 
tious way,  romantic;  isn't  it  like  something  in  a 
poem  of  Verlaine's;  hasn't  it  now,  in  the  dim 
light,  a  kind  of  beauty?  And  this  mood  of 
meditation  after  our  excellent  tea,  what  name, 
if  we  are  honest,  can  we  call  it  by,  if  we  do  not 
call  it  Happiness? ' 


MISAPPREHENSION 

PEOPLE  often  seem  to  take  me  for  some 
one  else;  they  talk  to  me  as  if  I  were  a 
person  of  earnest  views  and  unalterable  con- 
victions. 'What  is  your  opinion  of 
Democracy?  '  they  ask:  '  Are  you  in  favour  of 
the  Channel  Tunnel?  '  '  Do  you  believe  in 
existence  after  Death?  ' 

I  assume  a  thoughtful  attitude,  and  by 
means  of  grave  looks  and  evasive  answers,  I 
conceal — or  at  least  I  hope  I  conceal — my  dis- 
creditable secret. 


'Si 


THE  LIFT 

T  T  7HAT  on  earth  had  I  come  up  for?  I 
VV  stood  out  of  breath  in  my  bedroom, 
having  completely  forgotten  the  errand  which 
had  carried  me  upstairs,  leaping  two  steps  at  a 
time. 

Gloves!  Of  course  it  was  my  gloves  which  I 
had  left  there.  But  what  did  gloves  matter,  I 
asked  myself,  in  a  world,  as  Dr.  Johnson  de- 
scribes it,  bursting  with  misery? 

O  stars  and  garters !  how  bored  I  am  by  this 
trite,  moralising  way  of  regarding  natural 
phenomena — this  crying  of  vanity  on  the 
beautiful  manifestations  of  mechanical  forces. 
This  desire  of  mine  to  appear  out  of  doors  in 
appropriate  apparel,  if  it  can  thus  defy  and 
overcome  the  law  of  gravitation,  if  it  can  lift 
twelve  stone  of  matter  thirty  or  forty  feet 
above  the  earth's  surface;  if  it  can  do  this  every 
day,  and  several  times  a  day,  and  never  get  out 
of  order,  is  it  not  as  remarkable  and  convenient 
in  the  house  as  a  hydraulic  lift  ? 


SLOANE  STREET 

WHEN  I  walk  out,  middle-aged,  but  still 
sprightly,  and  still,  if  the  truth  must 
be  told,  with  an  idiot  dream  in  my  heart  of 
some  romantic  encounter,  I  look  at  the  passers- 
by,  say  in  Sloane  Street,  and  then  I  begin  to 
imagine  moonfaces  more  alluring  than  any  I 
see  in  that  thoroughfare.  But  then  again  vaster 
thoughts  visit  me,  remote  metaphysical 
musings;  those  faces  like  moons  I  imagined  all 
wane  as  moons  wane,  the  passers-by  vanish; 
and  immortal  Reason,  disdaining  the  daymoth 
she  dwells  with,  turns  away  to  her  crystalline 
sphere  of  sublime  contemplation.  I  am  lost 
out  of  time,  I  walk  on  alone  in  a  world  of  white 
silence. 


53 


REGENT'S  PARK 

I  WONDERED,  as  I  passed  Regent's  Park 
on  my  way  to  Hampstead,  what  kind  of 
people  live  in  those  great  stuccoed  terraces  and 
crescents,  with  their  solemn  facades  and  friezes 
and  pediments  and  statues.  People  larger  than 
life  I  picture  the  inhabitants  of  those  inex- 
pensive, august,  unfashionable  houses,  people 
with  a  dignity  of  port,  an  amplitude  of  back, 
an  emphasis  of  vocabulary  and  conviction 
unknown  in  other  regions;  Dowagers  and 
Dignitaries  who  have  retired  from  a  world  no 
longer  worthy  of  them,  ex-Governors  of 
Dominions,  unavailing  Viceroys,  superannuated 
Bishops  and  valetudinarian  Generals,  who  wear 
top-hats  and  drive  around  the  Park  in  old- 
fashioned  barouches — a  society,  I  imagine  it, 
not  frivolous,  not  flippant,  entirely  devoid  of 
double  meanings;  a  society  in  which  the 
memory  of  Queen  Victoria  is  still  revered,  and 
regrets  are  still  felt,  perhaps,  for  the  death  of 
the  Prince  Consort. 

Or,  as  I  have  sometimes  fancied,  are  those 
noble  mansions  the  homes  of  the  Victorian 
Statesmen  and  Royal  Ladies  and  distinguished- 
looking  Murderers  who,  in  the  near-by  wax- 
work exhibition,  gaze  on  the  shallow,  modern 
generation  which  chatters  and  pushes  all  day 
before  the  glassy  disapprobation  of  their  eyes? 
54 


THE  AVIARY 

PEACOCK  Vanities,  great,  crested  Cocka- 
toos of  Glory,  gay  Infatuations  and 
painted  Daydreams — what  a  pity  it  is  all  the 
Blue  Birds  of  impossible  Paradises  have  such 
beaks  and  sharp  claws,  that  one  really  has  to 
keep  them  shut  up  in  their  not  too  cleanly 
cages! 


55 


ST.  JOHN'S  WOOD 

AS  I  walked  on  the  air  soon  lightened;  the 
Throne,  the  Altar  and  the  top-hat  cast 
fainter  shadows,  the  figures  of  John  Bright  and 
Gladstone  and  Queen  Victoria  faded  from  my 
mind.  I  had  entered  the  precincts  of  St.  John's 
Wood;  and  as  I  went  past  its  villas  of  coquet- 
tish aspect,  with  their  gay  Swiss  gables,  their 
frivolously  Gothic  or  Italian  or  almost  Oriental 
faces,  the  lighter  aspects  of  existence  they 
represent,  the  air  they  have  of  not  taking  life 
too  seriously,  began  to  exert  their  influence. 

St.  John's  Wood  is  the  home  in  fiction  of 
adventuresses  and  profligacy  and  Bohemian 
supper-parties;  often  have  I  read  about  those 
foreign  Countesses,  of  unknown  history  and 
incredible  fascination,  who  decoy  handsome 
young  officials  of  the  Foreign  Office  to  these 
villas,  and  rob  them,  in  dim-lit,  scented  bed- 
rooms, of  important  documents.  But  I  at  least 
have  never  too  harshly  blamed  these  young 
diplomatists.  Silent  is  the  street  as  the 
mysterious  brougham  pauses,  lovely  the  eyes 
that  flash,  and  graceful  the  white-gloved  hand 
that  beckons  from  the  carriage  window;  and 
how  can  they  resist  (for  they  are  only  human) 
the  lure  of  so  adventurous,  so  enchanting  an 
invitation  ? 

56 


THE  GARDEN  SUBURB 

I  HAD  often  heard  of  the  Hampstead 
Garden  Suburb,  and  the  attempt  of  its 
inhabitants  to  create  an  atmosphere  of  the 
Higher  Culture,  to  concentrate,  as  it  were,  the 
essence  of  the  ideal  life  in  one  region.  But  I 
must  now  confess  that  it  was  in  a  spirit  of  pro- 
fane curiosity  that  I  walked  up  towards  its 
courts  and  closes.  And  when  I  saw  the  notices 
of  the  Societies  for  Ethical  Culture  and  Handi- 
crafts and  Child  Study,  the  lectures  on  Rein- 
carnation, the  Holy  Grail,  the  Signs  of  the  Zo- 
diac, and  the  Teaching  of  the  Holy  Zoroaster, 
I  am  afraid  I  laughed.  But  how  shallow, 
how  thin  this  laughter  soon  sounded  amid  the 
quiet  amenity,  the  beautiful  distinction  of  this 
pretty  paradise!  It  was  an  afternoon  of 
daydreams;  the  autumnal  light  under  the  low 
clouds  was  propitious  to  inner  recollection;  and 
as  I  walked  the  streets  of  this  ideal  city,  soothed 
by  the  sense  of  order  and  beautiful  architecture 
all  around  me,  I  began  to  feel  that  I  too  was  an 
Idealist,  that  here  was  my  spiritual  home,  and 
that  it  would  be  a  right  and  seemly  thing  to  give 
up  the  cinemas  and  come  and  make  my  dwell- 
ing on  this  hill-top.  Pictures  floated  before  my 
eyes  of  tranquil  days,  days  of  gardening  and 


57 


THE  GARDEN  SUBURB 

handicrafts   and   lectures,   evenings   spent   in 
perusing  the  world's  masterpieces. 

Although  I  still  frequent  the  cinemas,  and 
spend  too  much  time  gazing  in  at  the  windows 
of  expensive  shops,  and  the  reverie  of  that 
afternoon  has  come  to  no  fruition,  yet  I  feel 
myself  a  better  person  for  it:  I  feel  that  it 
marks  me  off  from  the  merely  cynical  and 
worldly.  For  I  at  least  have  had  a  Pisgah 
sight  of  the  Promised  City;  I  have  made  its 
ideal  my  own,  if  but  for  an  afternoon,  and 
only  in  a  daydream. 


SUNDAY  CALLS 


VV  whe'n 


must  say!  '    Reason  exclaimed, 
we  found  ourselves  in  the  street 
again. 

'  What's  the  matter  now?  '  I  asked  uneasily. 
'  Why  are  you  always  trying  to  be  some  one 
else?    Why  not  be  what  you  really  are?  ' 

*  But  what  am  I  really?    Again  I  ask  you?  ' 

'  I  do  hate  to  see  you  playing  the  ass;  and 
think  how  they  must  laugh  at  you!  ' 

The  glossy  and  respected  image  of  myself 
I  had  left  in  the  house  behind  us  began  to 
tarnish. 

*  And  what  next?  '  my  querulous  companion 
went  on.    '  What  will  you  be  in  South  Kensing- 
ton, I  wonder?    a  sad  and  solitary  Satan,  disil- 
lusioned and  distinguished,  or  a  bluff,  breezy 
sailor,    fond    of    his    bottle    and    his    boon 
companions?  ' 


59 


AN  ANOMALY 

people  embellish  their  conver- 
sation with  a  glitter  of  titles,  and 
drag  into  it  self-aggrandizing  anecdotes,  though 
I  laugh  at  this  peacock  vein  in  them,  I  do  not 
harshly  condemn  it.  Nay,  since  I  too  am  hu- 
man, since  I  too  belong  to  the  great  house- 
hold, would  it  be  surprising  if — say  once  or 
twice  in  my  life — I  also  should  have  gratified 
this  tickling  relish  of  the  tongue? 

No — but  what  is  surprising,  is  the  way  that, 
as  I  feel,  I  alone  always  escape  detection, 
always  throw  dust  in  other  people's  eyes. 


60 


THE  LISTENER 

THE  topic  was  one  of  my  favourite  topics  of 
conversation,  but  I  didn't  at  all  feel  on 
this  occasion  that  it  was  I  who  was  speaking. 
No,  it  was  the  Truth  shining  through  me;  the 
light  of  the  Revelation  which  I  had  been  chosen 
to  proclaim  and  blazon  to  the  world.  No 
wonder  they  were  all  impressed  by  my  moving 
tones  and  gestures;  no  wonder  even  the 
fastidious  lady  whom  it  was  most  difficult  to 
please  kept  watching  me  with  almost  ecstatic 
attention. 

As  a  cloud  may  obscure  the  sun  in  his  glory, 
so  from  some  morass  of  memory  arose  a  tiny 
mist  of  words  to  darken  my  mind  for  a  moment. 
I  brushed  them  aside;  they  had  no  meaning. 
Sunning  myself  in  the  mirror  of  those  eyes, 
never,  for  a  moment,  could  I  credit  that  devil- 
suggested  explanation  of  their  gaze. 

Oh,  no!  that  phrase  I  had  heard,  I  had  heard, 
was  a  nonsense  phrase;  the  words,  '  She  mim- 
ics you  to  perfection/  were  nothing  but  a  bit 
of  unintelligible  jabber. 


61 


ABOVE  THE  CLOUDS 

*T  DO  so  hate  gossip,'  she  murmured. 
J[      'How  I  hate  it  too!  '  I  heard  myself 
exclaim. 

*  There  is  so  much  that  is  good  and  noble  in 
human  nature;  why  not  talk  of  that?  ' 

*  Why  not  indeed?  '  I  sighed. 

'I  always  feel  that  it  is  one's  own  fault  if 
one  dislikes  people,  or  finds  them  boring.' 

'  How  I  agree  with  you!  '  I  cried  sincerely. 

'  But  people  are  nowadays  so  cynical — they 
sneer  at  everything  that  makes  life  worth  living 
— Love,  Faith,  Friendship — ' 

1  And  yet  those  very  names  are  so  lovely  that 
even  when  used  in  mockery  they  shed  a 
radiance — they  shine  like  stars.' 

'  How  beautifully  you  put  it!  I  have  so  en- 
joyed our  talk.'  I  had  enjoyed  it  too,  and  felt 
all  the  better  for  it,  only  a  little  giddy  and  out 
of  breath,  as  if  I  had  been  up  in  a  balloon. 


62 


THE  BUBBLE 

WALKING  home  at  night,  troubled  by 
the  world's  affairs,  and  with  the 
National  Debt  crushing  down  my  weak 
shoulders,  I  sometimes  allow  my  Thoughts  an 
interlude  of  solace.  From  the  jar  in  which  I 
keep  my  vanity  bottled,  I  remove  the  cork;  out 
rushes  that  friendly  Jinn  and  swells  up  and 
fills  the  sky.  I  walk  on  lightly  through  another 
world,  a  world  in  which  I  cut  a  very  different 
figure. 

I  shall  not  describe  that  exquisite,  evanes- 
cent universe;  even  for  me  'tis  but  the  bubble 
of  a  moment;  I  soon  snuff  it  out,  or  of  itself 
it  melts  in  the  thin  air. 


CAUTION 

WITH  all  that  I  know  about  life,  all  this 
cynical  and  sad  knowledge  of  what 
happens  and  must  happen,  all  the  experience 
and  caution  and  disillusion  stored  and  packed 
in  the  uncanny,  cold,  grey  matter  of  my  cere- 
brum— with  all  this  inside  my  head,  how  can  I 
ever  dream  of  banging  it  against  the  Stars  ? 


64 


DESIRES 

THESE  exquisite  and  absurd  fancies  of 
mine — little  curiosities,  and  greedinesses, 
and  impulses  to  kiss  and  touch  and  snatch,  and 
all  the  vanities  and  artless  desires  that  nest  and 
sing  in  my  heart  like  birds  in  a  bush — all  these, 
we  are  now  told,  are  an  inheritance  from  our 
pre-human  past,  and  were  hatched  long  ago  in 
very  ancient  swamps  and  forests.  But  what  of 
that?  I  like  to  share  in  the  dumb  delights 
of  birds  and  animals,  to  feel  my  life  drawing  its 
sap  from  roots  deep  in  the  soil  of  Nature.  I  am 
proud  of  those  bright-eyed,  furry,  four-footed 
progenitors,  and  not  at  all  ashamed  of  my 
cousins,  the  Tigers  and  Apes  and  Peacocks. 


MOMENTS 

1  A  WFUL  moments?  Why,  yes,  of  course/ 
Xx.  I  said,  'life  is  full  of  them — let  me 
think— > 

'  To  find  other  people's  unposted  letters  in  an 
old  pocket;  to  be  seen  looking  at  oneself  in  a 
street-mirror,  or  overhead  talking  of  the  Ideal 
to  a  duchess;  to  refuse  Nuns  who  come  to  the 
door  to  ask  for  subscriptions,  or  to  be  lent  by  a 
beautiful  new  acquaintance  a  book  she  has 
written  full  of  mystical  slipslop,  or  dreadful 
musings  in  an  old-world  garden — ' 


66 


THE  EPITAPH 

UT  perhaps  he  is  a  friend  of  yours?' 
said  my  lips-  '  Is  it  safe?  '  my  eyes 
asked,  '  Dare  I  tell  you  what  I  think  of  him?  ' 
It  was  safe;  only  silence  fell  upon  them, 
those  Sad  Ones,  who  at  my  decease  should 
murmur,  '  He  never  said  of  any  one  an  unkind 
word.'  'Alas,  Farewell!  '  breathed  that  boy- 
ish daydream  of  my  funeral,  as  it  faded. 


67 


INTERRUPTION 

'TIFE,'  said  a  gaunt  widow,  with  a  reputa- 

I  j  tion  for  being  clever — '  life  is  a  perpet- 
ual toothache.' 

In  this  vein  the  conversation  went  on:  the 
familiar  topics  were  discussed  of  labour  trou- 
bles, epidemics,  cancer,  tuberculosis,  and  taxa- 
tion. 

Near  me  there  sat  a  little  old  lady  who  was 
placidly  drinking  her  tea,  and  taking  no  part  in 
the  melancholy  chorus.  '  Well,  I  must  say,' 
she  remarked,  turning  to  me  and  speaking  in  an 
undertone, '  I  must  say  I  enjoy  life.' 

'  So  do  I,'  I  whispered. 

'  When  I  enjoy  things/  she  went  on,  { I 
know  it.  Eating,  for  instance,  the  sunshine, 
my  hot-water  bottle  at  night.  Other  people  are 
always  thinking  of  unpleasant  things.  It  makes 
a  difference,'  she  added,  as  she  got  up  to  go 
with  the  others. 

'  All  the  difference  in  the  world,'  I  answered. 

It's  too  bad  that  I  had  no  chance  for  a  longer 
conversation  with  this  wise  old  lady.  I  felt 
that  we  were  congenial  spirits,  and  had  a  lot 
to  tell  each  other.  For  she  and  I  are  not  among 
those  who  fill  the  mind  with  garbage ;  we  make 
a  better  use  of  that  divine  and  adorable  endow- 
ment. We  invite  Thought  to  share,  and  by 
68 


INTERRUPTION 

sharing  to  enhance,  the  pleasures  of  the  delicate 
senses;  we  distil,  as  it  were,  an  elixir  from  our 
golden  moments,  keeping  out  of  the  shining 
crucible  of  consciousness  everything  that  tastes 
sour.  I  do  wish  that  we  could  have  discussed  at 
greater  length,  like  two  Alchemists,  the  theory 
and  practice  of  our  art. 


69 


THE  EAR-TRUMPET 

were  talking  of  people  I  did  not 
_    know.    '  How  do  they  spend  their  time 
there? '  some  one  asked. 

Then  I,  who  had  been  sitting  too  long  silent, 
raised  my  voice.  '  Ah,  that's  a  mysterious  ques- 
tion, when  you  think  of  it,  how  people  spend 
their  time.  We  only  see  them  after  all  in 
glimpses;  but  what,  I  often  wonder,  do  they  do 
in  their  hushed  and  shrouded  hours — in  all  the 
interstices  of  their  lives?  ' 
'  In  the  what?  ' 

'In  the  times,  I  mean,  when  no  one  sees 
them.    In  the  intervals.' 
'  But  that  isn't  the  word  you  used?  ' 
1  It's  the  same  thing — the  interstices — ' 
Of  course  there  was  a  deaf  lady  present. 
'  What  did  you  say?  '  she  inquired,  holding  out 
her  ear-trumpet  for  my  answer. 


70 


GUILT 

WHAT  should  I  think  of?  I  asked  myself 
as  I  opened  my  umbrella.  How  should 
I  amuse  my  imagination,  that  harsh,  dusky, 
sloshy,  winter  afternoon,  as  I  walked  to  Bed- 
ford Square?  Should  I  think  of  Arabia  or 
exotic  birds;  of  Albatrosses,  or  of  those  great 
Condors  who  sleep  on  their  outspread  wings 
in  the  blue  air  above  the  Andes? 

But  a  sense  of  guilt  oppressed  me.  What  had 
I  done  or  left  undone?  And  the  shadowy 
figures  that  seemed  to  menace  and  pursue  me  ? 
Yes,  I  had  wronged  them;  it  was  again  those 
Polish  Poets,  it  was  Mickiewicz,  Slowacki, 
Szymonowicz,  Krasicki,  Kochanowski,  of  all 
whose  works  I  had  never  read  a  word. 


CADOGAN  GARDENS 

OUT  of  the  fog  a  dim  figure  accosted  me. 
'  I  beg  your  pardon,  Sir,  but  could  you 
tell  me  how  to  get  to  Cadogan  Gardens?  ' 

'  Cadogan  Gardens?  I  am  afraid  I  am  lost 
myself.  Perhaps,  Sir,'  I  added  (we  two 
seemed  oddly  alone  and  intimate  in  that  white 
world  of  mystery  together),  '  perhaps,  Sir,  you 
can  tell  me  where  I  can  find  the  Gardens  I  am 
looking  for?  '  I  breathed  their  name. 

1  Hesperian  Gardens? '  the  voice  repeated. 
'  I  don't  think  I  have  ever  heard  of  Hesperian 
Gardens.' 

1  Oh,  surely!  '  I  cried,  l  The  Gardens  of  the 
Sunset  and  the  singing  Maidens!  ' 

'  But  what  I  am  really  looking  for,'  I  con- 
fided to  that  dim-seen  figure,  'what  I  am 
always  hoping  to  find  is  the  Fortunate  Abodes, 
the  Happy  Orchard,  the  Paradise  our  parents 
lost  so  long  ago.' 


72 


THE  RESCUE 

AS  I  sat  there,  hopeless,  with  my  coat  and 
hat  on  in  my  bedroom,  I  felt  I  had  no 
hold  on  life,  no  longer  the  slightest  interest  in 
it.  To  gain  all  that  the  world  could  give  I 
would  not  have  raised  a  listless  finger;  and  it 
was  entirely  without  intention  that  I  took  a 
cigarette,  and  felt  for  matches  in  my  pocket. 
It  was  the  act  of  an  automaton,  of  a  corpse 
that  twitches  a  little  after  life  has  left  it. 

But  when  I  found  that  I  hadn't  any  matches, 
that — hang  it! — there  wasn't  a  box  of  matches 
anywhere,  then,  with  this  vexation,  life  came 
flooding  back — the  warm,  familiar  sense  of  my 
own  existence,  with  all  its  exasperation,  and 
incommunicable  charm. 


73 


CHARM 

"QJ PEAKING  of  Charm/  I  said,  'there  is 
j^  one  quality  which  I  find  very  attractive, 
though  most  people  don't  notice  it,  and  rather 
dislike  it  if  they  do.  That  quality  is  Observa- 
tion. You  read  of  it  in  eighteenth-century 
books — "  a  Man  of  much  Observation,"  they 
say.  So  few  people,'  I  went  on,  '  really  notice 
anything — they  live  in  theories  and  thin  dreams, 
and  look  at  you  with  unseeing  eyes.  They  take 
very  little  interest  in  the  real  world;  but  the 
Observers  I  speak  of  find  it  a  source  of  inex- 
haustible fascination.  Nothing  escapes  them; 
they  can  tell  at  once  what  the  people  they  meet 
are  like,  where  they  belong,  their  profession, 
the  kind  of  houses  they  live  in.  The  slightest 
thing  is  enough  for  them  to  judge  by — a  tone 
of  voice,  a  gesture,  a  way  of  putting  on  the 
hat—' 

'  I  always  judge  people,'  one  of  the  company 
remarked, '  by  their  boots.  It's  people's  feet  I 
look  at  first.  And  bootlaces  now — what  an  aw- 
ful lot  bootlaces  can  tell  you !  ' 

As  I  slipped  my  feet  back  under  my  chair,  I 
subjected  my  theory  of  Charm  to  a  rapid 
revision. 


74 


CARAVANS 

ALWAYS  over  the  horizon  of  the  Sahara 
move  those  soundless  caravans  of  camels, 
swaying  with  their  padded  feet  across  the  desert 
I  imagine,  till  in  the  shadowy  distance  of  my 
mind  they  fade  away,  and  vanish. 


75 


THE  SUBURBS 

WHAT  are  the  beliefs  about  God  in 
Grosvenor  Gardens,  the  surmises  of 
South  Kensington  concerning  our  fate  beyond 
the  Grave?  On  what  grounds  does  life  seem 
worth  living  in  Pimlico;  and  how  far  in  the 
Cromwell  Road  do  they  follow,  or  think  they 
follow,  the  precepts  of  the  Sermon  on  the 
Mount? 

If  I  can  but  dimly  discern  the  ideals  of  these 
familiar  regions,  how  much  more  am  I  in  the 
dark  about  the  inner  life  of  the  great  outer 
suburbs.  In  what  works  of  local  introspection 
can  I  study  the  daydreams  of  Brixton,  the 
curiosities  and  discouragements  of  Camberwell 
or  Ealing? 

More  than  once  I  have  paused  before  a 
suburban  villa,  telling  myself  that  I  had  after 
all  but  to  ring  the  bell,  and  go  in  and  ask  them. 
But  alas,  they  would  not  tell  me;  they  could  not 
tell  me,  even  if  they  would. 


76 


THE  CONCERTO 

«TT  THAT    a    beautiful    movement!  '    she 

V V    murmured,  as  the  music  paused. 

'  Beautiful !  '  I  roused  myself  to  echo,  though 
I  hadn't  heard  a  note. 

Immediately  I  found  myself  again  in  the 
dock;  and  again  the  trial  began,  that  ever-re- 
curring criminal  Action  in  which  I  am  both 
Judge  and  culprit,  all  the  jury,  and  the  advo- 
cate on  either  side. 

I  now  pleaded  my  other  respectable  attain- 
ments and  previous  good  character;  and  win- 
ning a  favourable  verdict,  I  dropped  back  into 
my  dream,  letting  the  violin  wail  unheard 
through  the  other  movements,  and  the  Grand 
Piano  tinkle. 


77 


SOMEWHERE 

SOMEWHERE,  far  below  the  horizon,  there 
is  a  City;  some  day  I  shall  sail  to  find  that 
sun-bright  harbour;  by  what  star  I  shall  steer 
my  vessel,  or  where  that  seaport  lies,  I  know 
not;  but  somehow,  through  calms  and  storms 
and  all  the  vague  sea-noises  I  shall  voyage, 
until  at  last  some  mountain  peak  will  rise  to 
tell  me  I  am  near  my  destination;  or  I  shall 
see,  some  day  at  dusk,  a  lighthouse  twinkling 
at  its  port. 


THE  PLATITUDE 

'T  T'S  after  all  the  little  things  in  life  that 
really  matter!  '  I  exclaimed.  I  was  as 
much  chagrined  as  they  were  flabbergasted  by 
this  involuntary  outbreak;  but  I  have  become 
an  expert  hi  that  Taoist  art  of  disintegration 
which  Yen  Hui  described  to  Confucius  as  the 
art  of  '  sitting  and  forgetting.'  I  have  learnt 
to  lay  aside  my  personality  in  awkward 
moments,  to  dissolve  this  self  of  mine  into  the 
All  Pervading;  to  fall  back,  in  fact,  into  the 
universal  flux,  and  sit,  as  I  now  sat  there,  a 
blameless  lump  of  matter,  rolled  on  according 
to  the  heavens'  rolling,  with  rocks  and  stones 
and  trees. 


79 


THE  FETISH 

ENSHRINED  in  a  box  of  white  paste- 
board upstairs  I  keep  a  black,  ceremonial 
object;  'tis  my  link  with  Christendom  and  the 
world  of  grave  custom;  only  on  sacred 
occasions  does  it  make  its  appearance,  only  at 
some  great  tribal  dance  of  my  race.  To  page- 
ants of  Woe  I  convey  it,  or  of  the  hugest 
Felicity:  at  great  Hallelujahs  of  Wedlock,  or 
at  last  Valedictions,  I  hold  it  bare-headed  as  I 
bow  before  altars  and  tombs. 


80 


THE  ECHO 

NOW  and  then,  from  the  other  end  of  the 
table,  words  and  phrases  reached  us  as  we 
talked. 

*  What  do  they  mean  by  complexes?  '  she 
asked.    '  Oh,  it's  only  one  of  the  catchwords 
of  the  day,'  I  answered.    '  Everything's  a  com- 
plex just  now.' 

*  The  talk  of  most  people,'  I  went  on,  '  is 
simply — how  shall  I  put  it? — simply  the  tick- 
ing of  clocks;  it  marks  the  hour,  but  it  has  no 
other  interest.    But  I  like  to  think  for  myself, 
to  be  something  more  than  a  mere  mouthpiece 
of  the  age  I  live  in — a  mere  sounding-board  and 
echo  of  contemporary  chatter/ 

'  Just  listen !  '  I  said  as  again  their  raised 
voices  reached  our  ears. 

'It's  simply  one  of  the  catchwords  of  the 
day/  some  one  was  shouting,  '  the  merest  echo 
of  contemporary  chatter!  ' 


81 


THE  SCAVENGER 

Y  parlour-maid   and   cook  both   gave 
notice—' 
*  My  stomach  is  not  at  all  what  it  should 


'  Of  course  the  telephone  was  out  of  order  —  ' 
'  The  coal  they  sent  was  all  stones  and  coal- 

dust—' 
'All  the  electric  wiring  has  had  to  be  re- 

newed —  ' 

'  I  find  it  impossible  to  digest  potatoes  —  ' 
1  My  aunt  has  had  to  have  eighteen  of  her 

teeth  extracted  —  ' 
Am  I  nothing  but  a  dust-bin  or  kitchen-sink 

for  other  people's  troubles?    Have  I  no  agonies, 

no  indigestions  of  my  own? 


82 


THE  HOT-BED 

IT  was  too  much:  the  news  in  the  paper 
was  appalling;  Central  Europe  and  the 
Continent  of  Asia  in  a  state  of  chaos;  no  com- 
fort anywhere;  tempests  in  the  Channel, 
earthquakes,  famines,  strikes,  insurrections. 
The  burden  of  the  mystery,  the  weight  of  all 
this  incorrigible  world  was  really  more  than  I 
could  cope  with. 

'  To  prepare  a  hot-bed  for  early  vegetables, 
equal  quantities  are  taken  of  horse-manure  and 
fallen  leaves;  a  large  heap  is  built  in  alternate 
layers,'  I  read  with  passionate  interest,  'of 
these  materials;  it  is  left  for  several  days,  and 
then  turned  over.  The  site  of  the  hot-bed 
should  be  sheltered  from  cold  winds,  but  open 
to  the  sunshine.  Early  and  dwarf  varieties  of 
potatoes  should  be  chosen;  asparagus  plants 
may  be  dug  up  from  the  open  garden — ' 


APHASIA 

'T)UT  you  haven't  spoken  a  word — you 
il  ought  to  tell  us  what  you  think.' 

*  The  truth  is/  I  whispered  hoarsely  in  her 
unaverted  ear,  '  the  truth  is,  I  talk  too  much. 
Think  of  all  the  years  I  have  been  wagging  my 
tongue;  think  how  I  shall  go  on  wagging  it, 
till  it  is  smothered  in  dust!  ' 

'  And  the  worst  of  it  is,'  I  went  on  hoarsely 
vociferating,  '  the  horror  is  that  no  one  under- 
stands me;  I  can  never  make  clear  to  any  one 
my  view  of  the  world.  I  may  wear  my  tongue 
to  the  stump,  and  no  one  will  ever  know — I 
shall  go  down  to  the  grave,  and  no  one  will 
know  what  I  mean.' 


MAGIC 

*  T^v  O  you  think  there  are  ghosts?  '  she 
L/  foamed,  her  eyes  ablaze,  '  do  you 
believe  in  Magic?  '  I  had  no  intention  of  dis- 
cussing the  supernatural  with  this  spook- 
enthusiast. 

'  Magic,'    I  mused  aloud,    *  what  a  beautiful 
word  Magic  is  when  you  think  of  it.' 

*  Are  you  interested  in  etymology?  '  I  asked. 
'  To  my  mind  there  is  nothing  more  fascinating 
than  the  derivation  of  words — it's  full  of  the 
romance  and  wonder  of  real  life  and  history. 
Think  of  Magic,  for  instance;  it  comes,  as  no 
doubt  you  know,  from  the  Magi,  or  ancient 
priests  of  Persia.' 

*  Don't  you  love  our  deposit  of  Persian  words 
in  English?    To  me  they  glitter  like  jewels  in 
our  northern  speech.    Magic  and  Paradise,  for 
instance;  and  the  names  of  flowers  and  gems 
and  rich  fruits  and  tissues — Tulip  and  Lilac 
and  Jasmin  and  Peach  and  Lapis  Lazuli'  I 
chanted,  waving  my  hands   to   keep  off  the 
spooks,  *  and  Orange  and  Azure  and  Scarlet' 


MRS.  BACKE 

MRS.  BACKE  would  be  down  in  a  few 
minutes,  so  I  waited  in  the  drawing- 
room  of  this  new  acquaintance  who  had  so 
kindly  invited  me  to  call. 

It  is  indiscreet,  but  I  cannot  help  it;  if  I  am 
left  alone  in  a  room,  I  cannot  help  peering 
about  at  the  pictures  and  ornaments  and  books. 
Interiors,  the  habitations  people  make  for 
their  souls,  are  so  fascinating,  and  tell  so  much; 
they  interest  me  like  sea-shells,  or  the  nests  of 
birds. 

1 A  lover  of  Switzerland/  I  inferred,  *  has 
travelled  in  the  East — the  complete  works  of 
Canon  Farrar — that  big  bust  with  whiskers  is 
Mendelssohn,  no  doubt.  Good  heavens!  a 
stuffed  cat!  And  that  Moorish  plaque  is 
rather  awful.  Still,  some  of  the  nicest  people 
have  no  taste — ' 

Then  I  saw  the  clock.  One  look  at  that 
pink  china  clock,  with  the  face  of  a  monkey, 
was  enough.  Softly  from  that  drawing-room, 
softly  I  stole  downstairs,  and  closed  the  front 
door  of  that  house  softly  behind  me. 


86 


WHISKERS 

was  once  a  young  man  who 
_  thought  he  saw  Life  as  it  really  is,  who 
prided  himself  on  looking  at  it  grimly  in  the 
face  without  illusions.  And  he  went  on  look- 
ing at  it  grimly,  as  he  thought,  for  a  number  of 
years.  This  was  his  notion  of  himself;  but  one 
day,  meeting  some  very  young  people,  he  saw, 
reflected  as  it  were  in  their  eyes,  a  bland  old 
gentleman  with  a  white  waistcoat  and  Victorian 
whiskers,  a  lover  of  souls  and  sunsets,  and 
noble  solutions  for  all  problems — 

That  was  what  he  saw  in  the  eyes  of  those 
atrocious  young  men. 


THE  SPELLING  LESSON. 

THE  anecdote  which  had  caused  the  laugh- 
ter of  those  young  people  was  not  a  thing 
to  joke  about.  I  expressed  my  conviction 
briefly;  but  the  time-honoured  word  I  made 
use  of  seemed  unfamiliar  to  them — they  looked 
at  each  other  and  began  whispering  together. 
Then  one  of  them  asked  in  a  hushed  voice, '  It's 
what,  did  you  say?  ' 

I  repeated  my  monosyllable  loudly. 

Again  they  whispered  together,  and  again 
their  spokesman  came  forward. 

1  Do  you  mind  telling  us  how  you  spell  it?  ' 

<  I  spell  it  with  a  W  !  '    I  shouted. 

'  W-r-o-n-g— Wrong!  ' 


88 


JEUNESSE 

MIND  you,  I  don't  say  that  their  eyes 
aren't  bigger  than  ours,  their  eyelashes 
longer,  their  faces  more  pink  and  plump — and 
they  can  skip  about  with  an  agility  of  limb 
which  we  cannot  equal.  But  all  the  same  a 
great  deal  too  much  is  made  of  these  painted 
dolls. 

Think  of  the  thinness  of  their  conversation! 

Depicted  in  gaudy  tints  on  the  covers  of 
paper  novels  they  look  well  enough;  and  they 
make  a  better  appearance  in  punts,  I  admit, 
than  we  do.  But  is  that  a  reason  why  they 
should  be  allowed  to  disturb  the  decorum  of 
tables,  and  interrupt  with  their  giggles  and 
squeaks  our  grave  consultations? 


89 


HANGING  ON 

IF  it  didn't  all  depend  on  me;  if  there  was 
any  one  else  to  decide  the  destinies  of  Eu- 
rope; if  I  wasn't  bound  to  vindicate  the  Truth 
on  all  occasions,  and  shout  down  every  false- 
hood, standing  alone  in  arms  against  a  sea  of 
error,  and  holding  desperately  in  place  the  hook 
from  which  Truth  and  Righteousness  and  Good 
Taste  hang  as  by  a  thread  and  tremble  over 
the  unspeakable  abyss;  if  but  for  a  day  or  two; 
— it  cannot  be,  I  cannot  let  Art  and  Civilisa- 
tion go  crashing  into  chaos.  Suppose  the  skies 
should  fall  in  while  I  was  napping;  suppose 
the  round  world  should  take  its  chance  to 
collapse  into  Stardust  again? 


90 


SUPERANNUATION 

'TT  7 HAT  an  intolerable  young  person!  '  I 

V  V  exclaimed,  the  moment  he  had  left  the 
room.  '  How  can  one  sit  and  listen  to  such 
folly?  The  arrogance  and  ignorance  of  these 
young  men!  And  the  things  they  write,  and 
their  pictures  I  ' 

'  It's  all  pose  and  self-advertisement,  I  tell 
you — ' 

'  They  have  no  reverence!  '    I  gobbled. 

Now  why  do  I  do  it?  I  know  it  turns  the 
hair  grey  and  stiffens  the  joints — why,  then,  by 
denouncing  them  in  this  unhygienic  fashion, 
do  I  talk  myself  into  an  invalid  and  old  fogey 
before  my  time? 


AT  THE  CLUB 

'TT'S  the  result  of  Board  School  Educa- 
X  tion— ' 

*  It's  the  popular  Press — ' 

'  It's     the     selfishness     of     the     Working 
Classes—' 

*  It's  the  Cinema—' 
'  It's  the  Jews—' 
'Paid  Agitators!—' 

1  The  decay  of  faith—' 
'  The  disintegration  of  family  life — ' 
'  I  put  it  down/  I  said, '  to  sun-spots.    If  you 
want  to  know  what  I  think/  I  went  inexorably 
on, '  if  you  ask  me  the  cause  of  all  this  modern 
unrest — ' 


92 


DELAY 

I  WAS  late  for  breakfast  this  morning,  for  I 
was  delayed  in  my  heavenly  hot  bath  by 
the  thought  of  all  the  other  Earnest  Thinkers, 
who,  at  that  very  moment — I  had  good  reason 
to  believe  it — were  blissfully  soaking  the  time 
away  in  hot  baths  all  over  London. 


93 


SMILES 

WHEN  people  smile  to  themselves  in  the 
street,  when  I  see  the  face  of  an  ugly 
man  or  uninteresting  woman  light  up  (faces,  it 
would  seem,  not  exactly  made  for  happy 
smiling),  I  wonder  from  what  visions  within 
those  smiles  are  reflected;  from  what  footlights, 
what  gay  and  incredible  scenes  they  gleam  of 
glory  and  triumph. 


94 


THE  DAWN 

MY  Imagination  has  its  dancing-places, 
like  the  Dawn  in  Homer;  there  are 
terraces,  with  balustrades  and  marble  foun- 
tains, where  Ideal  Beings  smile  at  my  ap- 
proach; there  are  ilex-groves  and  beech  trees 
in  whose  shadows  I  hold  forth  for  ever;  gar- 
dens fairer  than  all  earthly  gardens  where 
groups  of  ladies  grow  never  weary  of  listening 
to  my  voice. 


95 


THE  PEAR 

'  TJ  UT  every  one  is  enthusiastic  about  the 
J[J  book!  '  I  protested.    '  Well,  what  if  they 
are?  *  was  the  answer. 

I  too  am  a  Superior  Person,  but  the  predica- 
ment was  awkward.  To  appear  the  dupe  of  a 
vulgar  admiration,  to  be  caught  crying  stale 
fish  at  a  choice  luncheon  party! 

1  Oh,  of  course!  '  I  hit  back,  <I  know  it's 
considered  the  thing  just  now  to  despise  the 
age  one  lives  in.  No  one,  even  in  Balham,  will 
admit  that  they  have  read  the  books  of  the  day. 
But  my  attitude  has  always  been '  (what  had 
it  been?  I  had  to  think  in  a  hurry),  *  I  have  al- 
ways felt  that  it  was  more  interesting,  after  all, 
to  belong  to  one's  own  epoch;  to  share  its  dated 
and  unique  vision,  that  flying  glimpse  of  the 
great  panorama,  which  no  subsequent  genera- 
tion can  ever  recapture.  To  be  Elizabethan  in 
the  age  of  Elizabeth;  romantic  at  the  height  of 
the  Romantic  Movement — ' 

But  it  was  no  good:  I  saw  it  was  no  good,  so 
I  took  a  large  pear  and  eat  it  in  silence.  I  know 
a  good  deal  about  pears,  and  am  particularly 
fond  of  them.  This  one  was  a  Doyenne  du 
Cornice,  the  most  delicious  kind  of  all. 


INSOMNIA 

O(|  OMETIMES,  when  I  am  cross  and  cannot 
1^  sleep,  I  begin  an  angry  contest  with  the 
opinions  I  object  to.  Into  the  room  they  flop, 
those  bat-like  monsters  of  Wrong-Belief  and 
Darkness;  and  though  they  glare  at  me  with 
the  daylight  faces  of  bullying  opponents,  and 
their  voices  are  the  voices  that  often  shout  me 
down  in  argument,  yet,  in  these  nocturnal  con- 
troversies, it  is  always  my  assertions  that  admit 
no  answer. 

I  do  not  spare  them ;  it  is  now  their  turn  to  be 
lashed  to  fury,  and  made  to  eat  their  words. 


97 


READING  PHILOSOPHY 

E  abstractedness  of  the  relation,  on  the 
other  hand,  brings  to  consciousness  no 
less  strongly  the  foreignness  of  the  Idea  to 
natural  phenomena.  In  its  widest  formula- 
tion— '  Mechanically  I  turned  the  page;  but 
what  on  earth  was  it  all  about?  Some  irrele- 
vant fancy  must  have  been  fluttering  between 
my  spectacles  and  the  printed  paper. 

I  turned  and  caught  that  pretty  Daydream. 
To  be  a  Wit — yes,  while  my  eyes  were  reading 
Hegel,  I  had  stolen  out  myself  to  amaze  so- 
ciety with  my  epigrams.  Each  conversation  I 
had  crowned  at  its  most  breathless  moment  with 
words  of  double  meaning  which  had  echoed  all 
through  London.  Feared  and  famous  all  my 
life-time  for  my  repartees,  when  at  last  had 
come  the  last  sad  day,  when  my  ashes  had 
been  swept  at  last  into  an  urn  of  moderate 
dimensions,  still  then  had  I  lived  upon  the  lips 
of  men;  still  had  my  plays  on  words  been 
echoed,  my  sayings  handed  down  in  memoirs 
to  ensuing  ages. 


98 


MORAL  TRIUMPH 

WHEN  I  see  motors  gliding  up  at  night  to 
great  houses  in  the  fashionable  squares, 
I  journey  in  them:  I  ascend  in  imagination 
the  grand  stairways  of  those  palaces;  and 
ushered  with  eclat  into  drawing-rooms  of 
splendour,  I  sun  myself  in  the  painted  smiles  of 
the  Mayfair  Jezebels,  and  glitter  in  that  world 
of  wigs  and  rouge  and  diamonds  like  a  star. 
There  I  quaff  the  elixir  and  sweet  essence  of 
mundane  triumph,  eating  truffles  to  the  sound 
of  trumpets,  and  feasting  at  sunrise  on  lobster- 
salad  and  champagne. 

But  it's  all  dust,  it's  all  emptiness  and  ashes; 
and  I  retire  to  an  imagined  desert  to  contend 
with  Demons;  to  overcome  in  holy  combats  un- 
speakable temptations,  and  purge,  by  prodigious 
abstinences,  my  heart  of  base  desire.  .  For  this 
is  the  only  imperishable  victory,  this  is  the  true 
immortal  garland ;  this  triumph  over  the  predi- 
lections of  our  fallen  nature  crowns  us  with  a 
satisfaction  which  the  vain  glory  of  the  world 
can  never  give. 


99 


A  VOW 

LIKE  the  Aztec  Emperors  of  ancient 
Mexico,  who  took  a  solemn  oath  to  make 
the  Sun  pursue  his  wonted  journey,  I  too  have 
vowed  to  corroborate  and  help  sustain  the  Solar 
System;  vowed  that  by  no  vexed  thoughts  of 
mine,  no  attenuating  doubts,  nor  incredulity, 
nor  malicious  scepticism,  nor  hypercritical  anal- 
ysis, shall  the  great  frame  and  first  principles 
of  things  be  compromised  or  shaken. 


100 


THE  SPRINGS  OF  ACTION 

'T  T  7  HAT  am  I?     What  is  man?  ' 

V  V  I  had  looked  into  a  number  of  books 
for  an  answer  to  this  question,  before  I  came  on 
Jeremy  Bentham's  simple  and  satisfactory 
explanation:  Man  is  a  mechanism,  moved  by 
just  so  many  springs  of  Action.  These  springs 
he  enumerates  in  elaborate  tables;  and  glancing 
over  them  this  morning  before  getting  up,  I 
began  with  Chanty,  All-embracing  Benevolence, 
Love  of  Knowledge,  Laudable  Ambition, 
Godly  Zeal.  Then  I  waited,  but  there  was  no 
sign  or  buzz  of  any  wheel  beginning  to  move  in 
my  inner  mechanism.  I  looked  again:  I  saw 
Arrogance,  Ostentation,  Vainglory,  Abomina- 
tion, Rage,  Fury,  Revenge,  and  I  was  about  to 
leap  from  my  bed  in  a  paroxysm  of  passions, 
when  fortunately  my  eye  fell  on  another  set 
of  motives,  Love  of  Ease,  Indolence,  Procrasti- 
nation, Sloth. 


101 


IN  THE  CAGE 

WHAT  I  say  is;  what  I  say!  '    I  vocif- 
erate, as  a  Parrot  in  the  great  cage 
of  the  World,  I  hop,  screeching,  'What  I  say 
is!  '  from  perch  to  perch. 


102 


SHRINKAGE 

Q  OMETIMES  my  soul  floats  out  beyond  the 
j^  constellations;  then  all  the  vast  life  of  the 
Universe  is  mine.  Then  again  it  evaporates, 
it  shrinks,  it  dwindles;  and  of  all  that  flood 
which  over-brimmed  the  bowl  of  the  great 
Cosmos,  there  is  hardly  enough  now  left  to  fill  a 
teaspoon. 


103 


VOICES 

U  smoke  too  much!  '  whispers  the  still 
small  voice  of  Conscience. 

'  You  are  a  failure,  nobody  likes  you/  Self- 
contempt  keeps  muttering. 

'  What's  the  good  of  it  all?  '  sighs  Disillu- 
sion, arid  as  a  breath  from  the  Sahara. 

I  can't  tell  you  how  all  these  Voices  bore 
me;  but  I  can  listen  all  day  with  grave  atten- 
tion to  that  suave  bosom- Jesuit  who  keeps  on 
unweariedly  proving  that  everything  I  do  is 
done  for  the  public  good,  and  all  my  acts  and 
appetites  and  inclinations  in  the  most  amazing 
harmony  with  Pure  Reason  and  the  dictates 
of  the  Moral  Law. 


104 


EVANESCENCE 

HOW  the  years  pass  and  life  changes,  how 
all  things  float  down  the  stream  of  Time 
and  vanish;  how  friendships  fade,  and  illusions 
crumble,  and  hopes  dissolve,  and  solid  piece 
after  piece  of  soap  melts  away  in  our  hands  as 
we  wash  them! 


105 


COMPLACENCY 

DOVE-GREY  and  harmless  as  a  dove, 
full  of  piety  and  innocence  and  pure 
thoughts,  my  Soul  brooded  unaffectedly  within 
me — I  was  only  half  listening  to  that  shrill 
conversation.  And  I  began  to  wonder,  as  more 
than  once  in  little  moments  like  this  of  self- 
esteem  I  have  wondered,  whether  I  might  not 
claim  to  be  something  more,  after  all,  than  a 
mere  echo  or  compilation — might  not  claim  in 
fact  to  possess  a  distinct  personality  of  my 
own.  Might  it  not  be  worth  while,  I  now 
asked  myself,  to  follow  up  this  pleasing  con- 
jecture, to  retire  like  Descartes  from  the  world, 
and  spend  the  rest  of  life,  as  he  spent  it,  try- 
ing to  prove  my  own  existence? 


106 


MY  PORTRAIT 

FOR  after  all  I  am  no  amoeba,  no  mere  sack 
and  stomach;  I  am  capable  of  discourse, 
can  ride  a  bicycle,  look  up  trains  in  Bradshaw; 
in  fact,  I  am  and  calmly  boast  myself  a  Human 
Being — that  Masterpiece  cf  Nature,  a  rational, 
polite,  meat-eating  Man. 

What  stellar  collisions  and  conflagrations, 
what  floods  and  slaughters  and  enormous 
efforts  has  it  not  cost  the  Universe  to  make 
me — of  what  astral  periods  and  cosmic  proc- 
esses am  I  not  the  crown  and  wonder? 

Where,  then,  is  the  Esplanade  or  Alp  or 
earth-dominating  Terrace  for  my  sublime 
Statue;  the  landscape  of  palaces  and  triumphal 
arches  for  the  background  of  my  Portrait; 
stairs  of  marble,  flung  against  the  sunset, 
not  too  narrow  and  ignoble  for  me  to  pause 
with  ample  gesture  on  their  balustraded  flights? 


107 


THE  RATIONALIST 

OCCULTISMS,  incantations,  glimpses  of 
the  Beyond,  intimations  from  another 
world — all  kinds  of  supernaturalisms  are  dis- 
tasteful to  me;  I  cling  to  the  known  world  of 
common  sense  and  explicable  phenomena;  and 
I  was  much  put  out  to  find,  this  morning,  a  cab- 
balistic inscription  written  in  letters  of  large 
menace  on  my  bath-room  floor.  TAM  HTAB 
— what  could  be  the  meaning  of  these  cryptic 
words,  and  how  on  earth  had  they  got  there? 
Like  Belshazzar,  my  eyes  were  troubled  by  this 
writing,  and  my  knees  smote  one  against  the 
other;  till  majestic  Reason,  deigning  to  look 
downward  from  her  contemplation  of  eternal 
causes,  spelt  backwards  for  me,  with  a  pitying 
smile,  the  homely,  harmless  inscription  on  the 
BATH  MAT,  which  was  lying  there  wrong  side 
up. 


108 


THOUGHTS 

ONE  Autumn,  a  number  of  years  ago — I 
forget  the  exact  date,  but  it  was  a  con- 
siderable time  before  the  War — I  spent  a  few 
weeks  in  Venice  in  lodgings  that  looked  out  on 
an  old  Venetian  garden.  At  the  end  of  the 
garden  there  was  a  rustic  temple,  and  on  its 
pediment  stood  some  naked,  decayed,  gesticu- 
lating statues — heathen  gods  and  goddesses  I 
vaguely  thought  them — and  above,  among  the 
yellowing  trees,  I  could  see  the  belfry  of  a  small 
convent — a  convent  of  Nuns  vowed  to  con- 
templation, who  were  immured  there  for  life, 
and  never  went  outside  the  convent  walls. 

The  belfry  was  so  near  that  when,  towards 
dusk,  the  convent  bell  began  to  ring  against  the 
sky,  I  could  see  its  bell-rope  and  clapper  mov- 
ing; and  sometimes,  as  I  sat  there  at  my  window, 
I  would  think  about  the  mysterious  existence, 
so  near  me,  of  those  life-renouncing  virgins. 

Very  clearly  it  comes  back  to  me,  the  look 
of  that  untidy  garden,  of  those  gesticulating 
statues,  and  of  that  convent  bell  swinging 
against  the  sky;  but  the  thoughts  that  I  thought 
about  those  Nuns  I  have  completely  forgotten. 
They  were  probably  not  of  any  especial  in- 
terest. 


109 


PHRASES 

IS  there,  after  all,  any  solace  like  the  solace 
and  consolation  of  Language?  When  I  am 
disconcerted  by  the  unpleasing  aspects  of 
existence,  when  for  me,  as  for  Hamlet,  this  fair 
creation  turns  to  dust  and  stubble,  it  is  not  in 
Metaphysics  nor  in  Religion  that  I  seek  reas- 
surance, but  in  fine  phrases.  The  thought  of 
gazing  on  life's  Evening  Star  makes  of  ugly  old 
age  a  pleasing  prospect;  if  I  call  Death  mighty 
and  unpersuaded,  it  has  no  terrors  for  me;  I  am 
perfectly  content  to  be  cut  down  as  a  flower,  to 
flee  as  a  shadow,  to  be  swallowed  like  a  snow- 
flake  on  the  sea.  These  similes  soothe  and 
effectually  console  me.  I  am  sad  only  at  the 
thought  that  Words  must  perish  like  all  things 
mortal;  that  the  most  perfect  metaphors  must 
be  forgotten  when  the  human  race  is  dust. 

'  But    the    iniquity    of    Oblivion    blindly 
scattereth  her  poppy.' 


no 


DISENCHANTMENT 

LIFE,  I  often  thought,  would  be  so  different 
if  I  only  had  one;  but  in  the  meantime  I 
went  on  fastening  scraps  of  paper  together  with 
pins. 

Opalescent,  infinitely  desirable,  in  the 
window  of  a  stationer's  shop  around  the  corner, 
gleamed  the  paste-pot  of  my  daydreams. 
Every  day  I  passed  it,  but  every  day  my 
thoughts  were  distracted  by  some  hope  or 
disenchantment,  some  metaphysical  perplexity, 
or  giant  preoccupation  with  the  world's  woe. 

And  then  one  morning  my  pins  gave  out.  I 
met  this  crisis  with  manly  resolution;  putting 
on  my  hat,  I  went  round  the  corner  and  bought 
three  paste-pots  and  calmly  took  them  home. 
At  last  the  spell  was  broken ;  but  Oh,  at  what  a 
cost! 

Unnerved  and  disenchanted,  I  sat  facing 
those  pots  of  nauseating  paste,  with  nothing  to 
wait  for  now  but  death. 


in 


ASK  ME  NO  MORE 

WHERE  are  the  snows  of  yesteryear? 
Ask  me  no  more  the  fate  of  Nightin- 
gales and  Roses,  and  where  the  old  Moons  go, 
or  what  becomes  of  last  year's  Oxford  Poets. 


112 


FAME 

O  OMEWHAT  furtively  I  bowed  to  the  new 
[^  Moon  in  Knightsbridge;  the  little  old  cere- 
mony was  a  survival,  no  doubt,  of  dark  super- 
stition, but  the  Wish  that  I  breathed  was  an 
inheritance  from  a  much  later  epoch.  Twas  an 
echo  of  Greece  and  Rome,  the  ideal  ambition  of 
poets  and  heroes;  the  thought  of  it  seemed  to 
float  through  the  air  in  starlight  and  music;  I 
saw  in  a  bright  constellation  those  stately  Im- 
mortals; their  great  names  rang  in  my  ears. 

'  May  I,  too, — '  I  whispered,  incredulous, 
as  I  lifted  my  hat  to  the  unconcerned  Moon. 


NEWS-ITEMS 

IN  spite  of  the  delicacy  of  my  moral  feelings, 
and  my  unrelaxed  solicitude  for  the  mainte- 
nance of  the  right  principles  of  conduct,  I  find  I 
can  read  without  tears  of  the  retired  Colonels 
who  forge  cheques,  and  the  ladies  of  unexcep- 
tionable position  who  are  caught  pilfering  furs 
in  shops.  Somehow  the  sudden  lapses  of  re- 
spected people,  odd  indecorums,  backbitings, 
bigamies,  embezzlements,  and  attempted  chasti- 
ties— the  surprising  leaps  they  make  now  and 
then  out  of  propriety  into  the  police-courts — 
somehow  news-items  of  this  kind  do  not  alto- 
gether— how  shall  I  put  it? — well,  they  don't 
absolutely  blacken  the  sunshine  for  me. 

And  Clergymen?  If  a  Clergyman  slips  up, 
do  not,  I  pray  you,  gentle  Reader,  grieve  on 
my  account  too  much. 


114 


JOY 

SOMETIMES  at  breakfast,  sometimes  in  a 
train  or  empty  bus,  or  on  the  moving 
stairs  at  Charing  Cross,  I  am  happy;  the  earth 
turns  to  gold,  and  life  becomes  a  magical  adven- 
ture. Only  yesterday,  travelling  alone  to 
Sussex,  I  became  light-headed  with  this  sudden 
joy.  The  train  seemed  to  rush  to  its  adorable 
destination  through  a  world  new-born  in  splen- 
dour, bathed  in  a  beautiful  element,  fresh  and 
clear  as  on  the  morning  of  Creation.  Even  the 
coloured  photographs  of  South  Coast  watering- 
places  in  the  railway  carriage  shone  with  the 
light  of  Paradise  upon  them.  Brighton  faced 
me;  next  to  it  divine  Southsea  beckoned;  then 
I  saw  the  beach  at  Sidmouth,  the  Tilly  Whim 
caves  near  Swanage — was  it  in  those  unhaunted 
caves,  or  amid  the  tumult  of  life  which  hums 
about  the  Worthing  bandstand,  that  I  should 
find  Bliss  in  its  quintessence? 

Or  on  the  pier  at  St.  Peter  Port,  perhaps,  in 
the  Channel  Islands,  amid  that  crowd  who 
watch  in  eternal  ecstasy  the  ever-arriving 
never-disembarking  Weymouth  steamer? 


IN  ARCADY 

WHEN  I  retire  from  London  to  my  rural 
solitudes,  and  taste  once  more,  as  al- 
ways, those  pure  delights  of  Nature  which  the 
Poets  celebrate — walks  in  the  unambitious 
meadows,  and  the  ever-satisfying  companion- 
ship of  vegetables  and  flowers — I  am  neverthe- 
less haunted  now  and  then  (but  tell  it  not  to 
Shelley's  Skylark,  nor  whisper  to  Words- 
worth's Daffodils,  the  disconcerting  secret) — I 
am  incongruously  beset  by  longings  of  which 
the  Lake  Poets  never  sang.  Echoes  and  images 
of  the  abandoned  City  discompose  my  arcadis- 
ings:  I  hear,  in  the  babbling  of  brooks,  the 
delicious  sound  of  London  gossip,  and  news- 
boys' voices  in  the  cries  of  birds.  Sometimes 
the  gold-splashed  distance  of  a  country  lane 
seems  to  gleam  at  sunset  with  the  posters  of  the 
evening  papers;  I  dream  at  dawn  of  dinner-in- 
vitations, when,  like  a  telephone-call,  I  hear  the 
Greenfinch  trill  his  electric  bell. 


116 


WORRIES 

IN  the  woods  about  my  garden  and  familiar 
precincts  lurk  the  fears  of  life;  all  threaten 
me,  some  I  may  escape,  of  others  I  am  the  des- 
tined and  devoted  victim.  Sooner  or  later — 
and  yet  in  any  case  how  soon! — I  shall  fall,  as 
I  have  seen  others  fall,  touched  by  an  unseen 
hand. 

But  I  do  not  think  of  these  Terrors  often, 
though  I  seem  to  hear  them  sometimes  moving 
in  the  thickets.  It  is  the  little  transitory 
worries  that  bite  and  annoy  me,  querulous  in- 
sects, born  of  the  moment,  and  perishing  with 
the  day. 


117 


THINGS  TO  WRITE 

WHAT  things  there  are  to  write,  if  one 
could  only  write  them!  My  mind  is 
full  of  gleaming  thoughts;  gay  moods  and 
mysterious,  moth-like  meditations  hover  in 
my  imagination,  fanning  their  painted  wings. 
They  would  make  my  fortune  if  I  could  catch 
them;  but  always  the  rarest,  those  freaked 
with  azure  and  the  deepest  crimson,  flutter 
away  beyond  my  reach. 

The  childish  and  ever-baffled  chase  of  these 
filmy  nothings  often  seems,  for  one  of  sober 
years  in  a  sad  world,  a  trifling  occupation.  But 
have  I  not  read  of  the  great  Kings  of  Persia 
who  used  to  ride  out  to  hawk  for  butterflies,  nor 
deemed  this  pastime  beneath  their  royal 
dignity? 


118 


PROPERTY 

I  SHOULD  be  very  reluctant  to  think  that 
there  was  anything  fishy  or  fraudulent 
about  the  time-honoured  institution  of  Private 
Property.  It  is  endorsed  by  Society,  defended 
by  the  Church,  maintained  by  the  Law;  and  the 
Slightest  tampering  with  it  is  severely  punished 
by  Judges  in  large  horsehair  wigs.  Oh,  cer- 
tainly it  must  be  all  right;  I  have  a  feeling  that 
it  is  all  right;  and  one  of  these  days  I  will  get 
some  one  to  explain  why  the  world  keeps  on 
putting  adequate  sums  of  its  currency  into  my 
pocket. 

But  of  course  it's  all  right — 


119 


IN  A  FIX 

TO  go,  or  not  to  go?  Did  I  want  or  not 
want  to  bicycle  over  to  tea  with  the 
Hanbury-Belchers  at  Pokemore?  Wouldn't  it 
be  pleasanter  to  stay  at  home? 

I  liked  the  Hanbury-Belchers — 

Or  did  I  really  like  them? 

Still,  it  might  be  pleasant? 

But  how  beforehand  can  one  ever  tell? 
Experience?  I  was  still,  I  felt,  as  ignorant  of 
life  as  a  newborn  infant;  experience  has  taught 
me  nothing;  what  I  needed  was  some  definite, 
a  priori  principle,  some  deep  conception  of  the 
meaning  of  existence,  in  the  light  of  which 
problems  of  this  kind  would  solve  themselves  at 
once. 

I  leant  my  bicycle  against  the  gate,  and  sat 
down  to  think  the  matter  out.  Calling  to  mind 
the  moral  debates  of  the  old  philosophers,  I 
meditated  on  that  Summum  Bonum,  or  Sov- 
ereign Felicity  of  which  they  argued;  but  from 
their  disputes  and  cogitations  what  came  back 
most  vividly — what  seemed  to  fall  upon  one  al- 
most in  a  hush  of  terror — was  that  paralysis 
or  dread  balance  of  desire  they  imagined;  the 
predicament  in  fact  of  that  philosophic  quad- 


120 


IN  A  FIX 

ruped,  who,  because  he  found  in  each  of  them 
precisely  the  same  attraction,  stood,  unable  to 
move,  between  two  bundles  of  hay,  until  he 
perished  of  hunger. 


121 


VERTIGO 

NO!  I  don't  like  it;  I  can't  approve  of  it; 
I  have  always  thought  it  most  regret- 
table that  serious  and  ethical  Thinkers  like 
ourselves  should  go  scuttling  through  space  in 
this  undignified  manner.  Is  it  seemly  that  I, 
at  my  age,  should  be  hurled,  with  my  books 
of  reference,  and  bed-clothes,  and  hot-water 
bottle,  across  the  sky  at  the  unthinkable  rate 
of  nineteen  miles  a  second?  As  I  say,  I  don't 
at  all  like  it.  This  universe  of  astronomical 
whirligigs  makes  me  a  little  giddy. 

That  God  should  spend  His  eternity — which 
might  be  so  much  better  employed — in  spin- 
ning countless  Solar  Systems,  and  skylarking, 
like  a  great  child,  with  tops  and  teetotums — 
is  not  this  a  serious  scandal?  I  wonder  what 
all  our  circumgyrating  Monotheists  really  do 
think  of  it? 


122 


THE  EVIL  EYE 

DRAWN  by  the  unfelt  wind  in  my  little 
sail  over  the  shallow  estuary,  I  lay  in 
my  boat,  lost  in  a  dream  of  mere  existence. 
The  cool  water  glided  through  my  trailing  fin- 
gers; and  leaning  over,  I  watched  the  sands 
that  slid  beneath  me,  the  weeds  that  languidly 
swayed  with  the  boat's  motion.  I  was  the 
cool  water,  I  was  the  gliding  sand  and  the 
swaying  weeds,  I  was  the  sea  and  sky  and 
sun,  I  was  the  whole  vast  Universe. 

Then  between  my  eyes  and  the  sandy 
bottom  a  mirrored  face  looked  up  at  me,  float- 
ing on  the  smooth  film  of  water  over  which 
I  glided.  At  one  look  from  that  too  familiar, 
and  yet  how  sinister  and  goblin  a  face,  my 
immeasurable  soul  collapsed  like  a  wrecked 
balloon;  I  shrank  sadly  back  into  my  named 
personality,  and  sat  there,  shabby,  hot,  and 
very  much  bored  with  myself  in  my  little  boat. 


123 


THE  EPITHET 

night- wandering,    enormous, 
honey-pale — ' 
The  morning  paper  lay  there  unopened;  I 
knew  I  ought  to  look  at  the  news,  but  I  was 
too  busy  just  then  trying  to  find  an  adjective 
for  the  Moon — the  magical,  unheard  of,  moony 
epithet,  which,  could  I  only  find  or  invent  it, 
what  then  would  matter  the  sublunary  quakes 
and  conflicts  of  this  negligible  earth? 


124 


THE  GARDEN  PARTY 

S,  I  suppose  it  is  rather  a  dull  Garden 
Party/  I  agreed,  though  my  local  pride 
was  a  little  hurt  by  the  disdain  of  that  vis- 
iting young  woman  for  our  rural  society. 
*  Still  we  have  some  interesting  neighbours, 
when  you  get  to  know  them.  Now  that  fat 
lady  over  there  in  purple — do  you  see  her? 
Mrs.  Turnbull — she  believes  in  Hell,  believes 
in  Eternal  Torment.  And  that  old  gentleman 
with  whiskers  and  white  spats  is  convinced  that 
England  is  tottering  on  the  very  brink  of  the 
abyss.  The  pie-faced  lady  he  is  talking  to  was, 
she  asserts,  Mary  Queen  of  Scots  in  a  pre- 
vious existence.  And  our  Curate — we're  proud 
of  our  Curate — he's  a  great  cricketer,  and  a 
kind  of  saint  as  well.  They  say  he  goes 
out  in  Winter  at  three  o'clock  in  the  morn- 
ing, and  stands  up  to  his  neck  in  a  pond,  pray- 
ing for  sinners.' 


125 


WELTSCHMERZ 

'T  TOW   depressed  you   look!     What  on 
J[  JL    earth's  the  matter?  ' 

'  Central  Europe/  I  said,  '  and  the  chaos  in 
China  is  something  awful.  There's  a  threat- 
ened shortage,  too,  of  beer  in  Copenhagen.' 

'  But  why  should  that  worry  you?  ' 

1  It  doesn't.  It's  what  I  said  to  Mrs.  Rum- 
bal — I  do  say  such  idiotic  things!  She  asked 
me  to  come  to  see  them.  "  I  shall  be  delight- 
ed," I  said,  "  as  delighted—" 

'  But  it's  your  fault  for  lending  me  that  book 
of  Siamese  translations! — "as  delighted,"  I 
said,  "  Mrs.  Rumbal,  as  a  royal  flamingo,  when 
he  alights  upon  a  cluster  of  lotuses."  ' 


126 


BOGEYS 

I  REMEMBER  how  charmed  I  was  with 
these  new  acquaintances,  to  whose  house  I 
had  been  taken  that  afternoon  to  call.  I  re- 
member the  gardens  through  which  we  saun- 
tered, with  peaches  ripening  on  the  sunny  walls; 
I  remember  the  mellow  light  on  the  old 
portraits  in  the  drawing-room,  the  friendly 
atmosphere  and  tranquil  voices;  and  how,  as 
the  quiet  stream  of  talk  flowed  on,  one  sub- 
ject after  another  was  pleasantly  mirrored  on 
its  surface — till,  at  a  chance  remark,  there  was 
a  sudden  change  and  darkening,  an  angry  swirl, 
as  if  a  monster  were  raising  its  head  above  the 
waters. 

What  was  it  about,  the  dreadful  disputa- 
tion into  which  we  were  plunged,  in  spite  of 
desperate  efforts  to  clutch  at  other  subjects? 
Was  it  Tariff  Reform  or  Table-rapping, — 
Bacon  and  Shakespeare,  Disestablishment,  per- 
haps— or  Anti-Vivisection?  What  did  any  of 
us  know  or  really  care  about  it?  What  force, 
what  fury  drove  us  into  saying  the  stupid,  in- 
tolerant, denunciatory  things  we  said;  that 
made  us  feel  we  would  rather  die  than  not  say 
them?  How  could  a  group  of  humane,  polite 
and  intelligent  people  be  so  suddenly  trans- 
formed into  barking  animals? 
127 


BOGEYS 

Why  do  we  let  these  Abstractions  and  im- 
placable Dogmatisms  take  possession  of  us, 
glare  at  each  other  through  our  eyes,  and  fight 
their  frenzied  conflicts  in  our  persons?  Life 
without  the  rancours  and  ever-recurring  bat- 
tles of  these  Bogeys  might  be  so  simple, 
friendly,  affectionate  and  pleasant! 


128 


LIFE-ENHANCEMENT 

I  WAS  simply  telling  them  at  tea  the  details 
of  my  journey — how  late  the  train  had  been 
in  starting,  how  crowded  the  railway  carriage, 
how  I  had  mislaid  my  umbrella,  and  nearly 
lost  my  Gladstone  bag. 

But  how  I  enjoyed  making  them  listen,  what 
a  sense  of  enhanced  existence  I  found  it  gave 
me  (and  to  think  that  I  have  pitied  bores!) 
to  force  my  doings,  my  interests,  my  universe, 
with  my  bag  and  umbrella,  down  their  throats! 


129 


ECLIPSE 

A  MILD  radiance  and  the  scent  of  flowers 
filled  the  drawing-room,  whose  windows 
stood  open  to  the  summer  night.  I  thought 
our  talk  delightful;  the  topic  was  one  of  my 
favourite  topics;  I  had  much  that  was  illu- 
minating to  say  about  it,  and  I  was  a  little 
put  out  when  we  were  called  to  the  window  to 
look  at  the  planet  Jupiter,  which  was  shining 
in  the  sky  just  then,  we  were  told,  with  great 
brilliance. 

In  turns  through  a  telescope  we  gazed  at 
that  planet:  I  thought  the  spectacle  over-rated, 
but  said  nothing.  Not  for  the  world,  not  for 
any  number  of  worlds  would  I  have  wished 
them  to  guess  why  I  was  displeased  with  that 
glittering  star. 


THE  PYRAMID 

*npO  read  Gibbon/  I  said  as  we  paced  that 
terrace  in  the  sunshine,  '  to  peruse  his 
metallic,  melancholy  pages,  and  then  forget 
them;  to  re-read  and  re- forget  the  Decline  and 
Fall;  to  fill  the  mind  with  that  great,  sad, 
meaningless  panorama  of  History,  and  then  to 
watch  it  fade  from  the  memory  as  it  has  faded 
from  the  glass  of  time — ' 

As  she  turned  to  me  with  a  glance  full  of 
enthusiasm,  '  What  is  so  enchanting,'  I  asked 
myself,  '  as  the  dawn  of  an  acquaintance  with 
a  lovely  woman  with  whom  one  can  share  one's 
thoughts?  ' 

But  those  dawns  are  too  often  false  dawns. 

It  was  her  remark  about  History,  how 
she  believed  the  builders  of  the  Great  Pyramid 
had  foreseen  and  foretold  many  events  of  Mod- 
ern History,  which  made  a  gigantic  shadow,  a 
darkness,  as  of  Egypt,  loom  between  us  on  that 
terrace. 


THE  FULL  MOON 

SUDDENLY  one  night,  low  above  the  trees, 
we  saw  the  great,  amorous,  unabashed 
face  of  the  full  Moon.  It  was  an  exhibition 
that  made  me  blush,  feel  that  I  had  no  right 
to  be  there.  '  After  all  these  millions  of  years, 
she  ought  to  be  ashamed  of  herself!  '  I  cried. 


132 


LUTON 

IN  a  field  of  that  distant,  half-neglected  farm, 
I  found  an  avenue  of  great  elms  leading 
to  nothing.  But  I  could  see  where  the  wheat- 
bearing  earth  had  been  levelled  into  a  terrace; 
and  in  one  corner  there  were  broken,  overgrown, 
garden  gateposts,  almost  hid  among  great  strag- 
gling trees  of  yew. 

This,  then,  was  the  place  I  had  come  to  see. 
Here  had  stood  the  great  palladian  house  or 
palace,  with  its  terraces,  and  gardens,  and  ar- 
tificial waters;  this  field  had  once  been  the 
favourite  resort  of  Eighteenth-Century  Fash- 
ion; the  Duchesses  and  Beauties  had  driven 
hither  in  their  gilt  coaches,  and  the  Beaux  and 
Wits  of  that  golden  age  of  English  Society. 
And  although  the  house  had  long  since  van- 
ished, and  the  plough  had  gone  over  its  pleas- 
ant places,  yet  for  a  moment  I  seemed  to  see 
this  fine  company  under  the  green  and  gold 
of  that  great  avenue;  seemed  to  hear  their 
gossiping  voices  as  they  passed  on  into  the 
shadows. 


133 


THE  DANGER  OF  GOING  TO  CHURCH 

AS  I  came  away  from  the  Evening  Service, 
walking  home  from  that  Sabbath  adven- 
ture, some  neighbours  of  mine  passed  me  in 
their  motor,  laughing.  Were  they  laughing  at 
me?  I  wondered  uneasily;  and  as  I  sauntered 
across  the  fields  I  vaguely  cursed  those  misbe- 
lievers. Yes,  yes,  their  eyes  should  be  dark- 
ened, and  their  lying  lips  put  to  silence.  They 
should  be  smitten  with  the  botch  of  Egypt,  and 
a  sore  botch  in  the  legs  that  cannot  be  healed. 
All  the  teeth  should  be  broken  in  the  mouths 
of  those  bloody  men  and  daughters  of  back- 
sliding; their  faces  should  become  as  flames, 
and  their  heads  be  made  utterly  bald.  Their 
little  ones  should  be  dashed  to  pieces  before 
their  eyes,  and  brimstone  scattered  upon  their 
habitations.  They  should  be  led  away  with 
their  buttocks  uncovered;  they  should  stagger 
to  and  fro  as  a  drunken  man  staggereth  in  his 
vomit. 

But  as  for  the  Godly  Man  who  kept  his 
Sabbaths,  his  should  be  the  blessings  of  those 
who  walk  in  the  right  way.  '  These  blessings  ' 
— the  words  came  back  to  me  from  the  Even- 
ing Lesson — '  these  blessings  shall  come  upon 
thee,  and  overtake  thee.'  And  suddenly,  in  the 
mild  summer  air,  it  seemed  as  if,  like  a  swarm 
134 


THE  DANGER  OF  GOING  TO  CHURCH 

of  bees  inadvertently  wakened,  the  blessings  of 
the  Bible  were  actually  rushing  after  me. 
From  the  hot,  remote,  passionate  past  of  He- 
brew history,  out  of  the  Oriental  climate  and 
unctuous  lives  of  that  infuriate  people,  gross 
good  things  were  coming  to  overwhelm  me  with 
benedictions  for  which  I  had  not  bargained. 
Great  oxen  and  camels  and  concubines  were 
panting  close  behind  me,  he-goats  and  she- 
goats  and  rams  of  the  breed  of  Bashan.  My 
barns  should  burst  their  doors  with  plenty, 
and  all  my  paths  drop  fatness.  My  face  should 
be  smeared  with  the  oil  of  rejoicing;  all  my 
household  and  the  beasts  of  my  household 
should  beget  and  bear  increase;  and  as  for  the 
fruit  of  my  own  loins,  it  should  be  for  multi- 
tude as  the  sands  of  the  sea  and  as  the  stars 
of  heaven.  My  little  ones  should  be  as  olive 
plants  around  my  table;  sons  and  daughters, 
and  their  sons  and  daughters  to  the  third  and 
fourth  generation,  should  rise  up  and  call  me 
blessed.  My  feet  should  be  dipped  in  butter, 
and  my  eyes  stand  out  with  fatness;  I  should 
flourish  as  the  Cedar  of  Lebanon  that  bringeth 
forth  fruit  in  old  age. 


135 


THE  SONNET 

IT  came  back  to  me  this  rainy  afternoon  for 
no  reason,  the  memory  of  another  after- 
noon long  ago  in  the  country,  when,  at  the  end 
of  an  autumn  day,  I  had  stood  at  the  rain- 
dashed  window  and  gazed  out  at  the  dim  land- 
scape; and  as  I  watched  the  yellowing  leaves 
blown  about  the  garden,  I  had  seen  a  flock  of 
birds  rise  above  the  half-denuded  poplars  and 
wheel  in  the  darkening  sky.  I  had  felt  there 
was  a  mysterious  meaning  in  that  moment,  and 
in  that  flight  of  dim-seen  birds  an  augury  of 
ill-omen  for  my  life.  It  was  a  mood  of  Au- 
tumnal, minor-poet  melancholy,  a  mood  with 
which,  it  had  occurred  to  me,  I  might  fill  out 
the  rhymes  of  a  lugubrious  sonnet. 

But  my  Sonnet  about  those  birds — those 
Starlings,  or  whatever  they  were — will,  I  fear, 
never  be  written  now.  For  how  can  I  now 
recapture  the  sadness,  the  self-pity  of  youth? 

Alas!  What  do  the  compensations  of  age 
after  all  amount  to?  What  joy  can  the  years 
bring  half  so  sweet  as  the  unhappiness  they 
take  away? 


136 


WELTANSCHAUUNG 

T  T  THEN,  now  and  then,  on  a  calm  night  I 
W  look  up  at  the  Stars,  I  reflect  on  the 
wonders  of  Creation,  the  unimportance  of  this 
Planet,  and  the  possible  existence  of  other 
worlds  like  ours.  Sometimes  it  is  the  self- 
poised  and  passionless  shining  of  those  serene 
orbs  which  I  think  of;  sometimes  Kant's  phrase 
comes  into  my  mind  about  the  majesty  of  the 
Starry  Heavens  and  the  Moral  Law;  or  I  re- 
member Xenophanes  gazing  at  the  broad  fir- 
mament, and  crying,  '  All  is  One !  '  and  thus, 
in  that  sublime  exclamation,  enunciating  for 
the  first  time  the  great  doctrine  of  the  Unity 
of  Being. 

But  these  Thoughts  are  not  my  thoughts; 
they  eddy  through  my  mind  like  scraps  of  old 
paper,  or  withered  leaves  in  the  wind.  What  I 
really  feel  is  the  survival  of  a  much  more  primi- 
tive mood — a  view  of  the  world  which  dates  in- 
deed from  before  the  invention  of  language. 
It  has  never  been  put  into  literature;  no  poet 
has  sung  of  it,  no  historian  of  human  thought 
has  so  much  as  alluded  to  it;  astronomers  in 
their  glazed  observatories,  with  their  eyes  glued 
to  the  ends  of  telescopes,  seem  to  have  had  no 
notion  of  it. 

But  sometimes,  far  off  at  night,  I  have  heard 
a  dog  howling  it  at  the  Moon. 
i37 


THE  ALIEN 

THE  older  I  grow,  the  more  of  an  alien  I 
find  myself  in  the  world;  I  cannot  get 
used  to  it,  cannot  believe  that  it  is  real.  I 
-think  I  must  have  been  made  to  live  on  some 
other  Star.  Or  perhaps  I  am  subject  to  hallu- 
cinations and  hear  voices;  perhaps  what  I  seem 
to  see  is  delusion  and  doesn't  happen;  perhaps 
people  don't  really  say  the  things  I  think  I 
hear  them  saying. 

Ah,  some  one  ought  to  have  told  me  when  I 
was  young,  I  should  certainly  have  been  told  of 
the  horrible  songs  that  are  sung  in  drawing- 
rooms;  they  ought  to  have  warned  me  about 
the  great  fat  women  who  suddenly  get  up  and 
bellow  out  incredible  recitations. 


138 


HYPOTHESES 

I  GOT  up  with  Stoic  fortitude  of  mind  in  the 
cold  this  morning;  but  afterwards,  in  my 
hot  bath,  I  joined  the  school  of  Epicurus.  I 
was  a  Materialist  at  breakfast;  after  it  an  Ideal- 
ist, as  I  smoked  my  first  cigarette  and  turned 
the  world  to  transcendental  vapour.  But  when 
I  began  to  read  the  Times  I  had  no  doubt  of 
the  existence  of  an  external  world. 

So  all  the  morning  and  all  the  afternoon 
opinions  kept  flowing  into  and  out  of  the  re- 
ceptacle of  my  mind;  till,  by  the  time  the  enor- 
mous day  was  over,  it  had  been  filled  by  most 
of  the  widely-known  Theories  of  Existence,  and 
then  emptied  of  them. 


139 


THE  ARGUMENT 

THIS  long  speculation  of  life,  this  thinking 
and  syllogising  that  always  goes  on  in- 
side me,  this  running  over  and  over  of  hypothe- 
sis and  surmise  and  supposition — one  day  this 
infinite  Argument  will  have  ended,  the  debate 
will  be  forever  over,  I  shall  have  come  to  an 
indisputable  conclusion,  and  my  brain  will  be 
at  rest. 


THE  END 


I4O 


on; 
COP.S 


UT>Cm  FCGONM.  UBRM4Y  FAOU1 


A    000  021  205    o 


